Once Upon A Time
by Aisuru1
Summary: Rated for language, youkai Inuyasha, and licking? The shard hunters (and Kouga) end up stranded in a cave during a storm. Shippou talks Kagome into telling them a story. Choas results.
1. The Three Little Pigs

AN: Of course I don't own Inuyasha, Kagome, Shippou, Miroku, Sango, Kouga, or Inuyasha's really cool sword. I don't even own the story of The Three Little Pigs. The cave and the rainstorm, however, are mine!!!  
  
***  
  
Outside the cave, beyond the protective barrier of Inuyasha's sword, the storm raged on. Torrential rain had fallen for hours without cease, washing out the path and stranding the shard hunters into the cramped shelter. They had managed to start a small fire with some seasoned wood a traveler had left near the back of the cave, but it didn't produce enough heat to force the chill from the air or dry out their sodden clothes, nor enough light for the human members of the party to see clearly. The group was uncomfortable, irritable, and bored.  
  
"I'm bored," Shippou whined yet again.  
  
Inuyasha growled and swiped his claws towards the little kitsune. With a squeak, Shippou leapt into the relative safety of Kagome's arms. She accepted the bundle of damp fur, petting him on the head even as she chided him for annoying the hanyou. "We all are, Shippou," she sighed, "but you know you are only getting Inuyasha mad by saying it over and over again."  
  
"Are you bored, Sango?" Miroku asked, trying to make out the demon huntress's features in the dim light. "Because I can think of several fun activities to while away the hours..."  
  
Kagome couldn't see exactly where on Sango's person Miroku had placed his hands, but she was sure the slap was well deserved. She sighed again. Shippou giggled. "Stay away from Kagome, you pervert," Inuyasha warned with a growl, scooting closer to her.  
  
"Stay away from my woman, you dogface," Kouga said with his own growl.  
  
"Where did you come from?" Inuyasha complained, jumping to a fighting stance.  
  
"Nasty storm out there," Kouga said, ignoring Inuyasha and speaking to Kagome. "I'm glad to see that dog-face had the sense to find shelter for you."  
  
"Actually, Shippou found the shelter," Miroku said.  
  
"Inuyasha didn't want to be stopped by a little rain," Sango added.  
  
"Feh!" was Inuyasha's reply.  
  
Kagome shuddered as yet another tree limb was hurled into the barrier by the wind. She instinctively tightened her grip on Shippou, who grinned shamelessly at a scowling Inuyasha.  
  
"Inuyasha made the barrier," Kagome admitted, keeping her eyes on the fire, "and without the barrier we might as well be outside in the storm."  
  
"Feh!" Inuyasha repeated, trying not to grin like an idiot at the complement. Lucky for him, none of the humans could really see him anyway.  
  
"Sometimes on rainy days my mother used to tell me a story," Shippou remembered, curling closer to Kagome. "Will you tell me a story, Kagome?"  
  
Kagome smiled down at the little fox. "Okay, let me think for a moment..."  
  
"Tell a story about animals!" Shippou exclaimed.  
  
"Something with a morale," Miroku suggested.  
  
"With an evil villain," Inuyasha demanded.  
  
"With a wolf!" Kouga said.  
  
Kagome smiled. "I know just the story. It is an old European fairy tale my mom used to tell me. Well, I'm not sure how old it is, maybe it hasn't even been written yet, but here it goes: There once were three little pigs, and they were brothers."  
  
"And the oldest brother was the villain," Inuyasha added.  
  
"No, the oldest brother was not the villain," Kagome scolded. "Don't interrupt. The three pigs were brothers, and none of them were evil villains. The three brothers each built a house."  
  
"Why?" Kouga asked.  
  
"Why what?"  
  
"Why did each brother build a house? They should have shared a den. A den is easier to defend against enemies, and when you live in a den you can share the tasks of pup rearing. You would be a lot happier in a den then you are wandering about with this dog-face, Kagome."  
  
Kagome rolled her eyes. "At the end of the story they all live together, okay, Kouga?" Kouga nodded and smiled, showing his fangs.  
  
"Now you've ruined the story, you stupid bitch!" Inuyasha complained. "What did you have to tell the ending for?"  
  
"That isn't the ending!" Kagome yelled. "Sit!"  
  
*Crash* "Stupid bitch, what did you do that for?"  
  
"Don't interrupt! Once upon a time there were three little pigs."  
  
"And they were brothers," Shippou added.  
  
Kagome gave the little fox a smile and then continued. "The first little pig built his house out of straw. The second little pig built his house out of twigs. The third little pig built his house out of bricks."  
  
"What the hell is a brick?" Inuyasha asked, still flattened on the floor of the cave.  
  
"Oh, it is a building material made of straw and clay and baked in a kiln," Kagome answered.  
  
"He made his house out of pottery?" Sango asked, confused.  
  
"What a funny house! I'll bet it fell down, and that is why he had to move in with his brothers, right Kagome?" Shippou asked.  
  
"No, um, bricks are really sturdy," she said. Everybody laughed. "It isn't a joke! We make lots of buildings out of bricks in my time."  
  
"Feh!" Inuyasha said. "That just goes to show how stupid everything is in your time!"  
  
Kagome had to bite her tongue to keep from sitting Inuyasha again. "Inuyasha, you've been to my time. You remember those blocks my school is made of? Those are bricks!"  
  
"Oh," Inuyasha said. "No, she's right," he told the group. "Those bricks are really strong. It is like building out of small blocks of stone, but all the stones are identical in size and shape."  
  
"That must take a lot of skilled stone-cutters," Miroku observed.  
  
"Your school's benefactor must be wealthy," Sango added.  
  
"No, bricks are molded, not cut, and they're made of scrap materials, so it is really a very affordable way to build. Can I get back to the story?" Kagome asked. She never would have imagined that telling a simple fairy tale would get so complex!  
  
The youkai and hanyou nodded. The humans, knowing Kagome couldn't see in the cave, asked her to please continue.  
  
"So one house was made of straw, one house was made of twigs, and one house was made of bricks. One day, the big bad wolf came looking for the three little pigs..."  
  
Inuyasha let out a bark of laughter. "The wolf is the villain?"  
  
Kouga growled at the hanyou. "Wolves are not villains! They are noble, aiding in the hunt and playing with our pups!"  
  
Kagome let out an embarrassed laugh. "Actually, in this story the wolf is the villain. Sorry, Kouga."  
  
Kouga sat down, upset that his woman would portray a wolf as a villain, but Kagome couldn't see his dejected expression, so she continued with her story. "So one day the wolf" -- she left off the big and bad parts -- "came looking for the three little pigs because he was hungry. He found the first little pig in the house of straw. He knocked upon the door. 'Little pig, little pig, let me in!' the wolf said. 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,' the little pig replied."  
  
"What in the hell is a chinny-chin-chin?" Inuyasha asked.  
  
Kagome blushed. "It's just the pig's chin."  
  
"So a pig's chin is called a chinny-chin-chin?" Sango asked.  
  
"No, um, the story is just told that way. That way what the pig says rhymes with what the wolf says," she tried to explain.  
  
Everyone just looked confused, so she continued. "'Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!' The wolf said. So he huffed, and he puffed, and he blew down the house made of straw. The little pig squealed and ran to his brother's house made out of sticks."  
  
Inuyasha howled with laughter at the ridiculousness of the story, and even Shippou chuckled. "Um, Kagome, I've seen buildings built of straw before, and I don't think they could be blown down by the breath of a common wolf," Miroku pointed out.  
  
Kouga was concerned about something much more important than the stability of straw as a building material: "What kind of wolf can't catch a stupid pig?" he asked incredulously. This only made Inuyasha laugh even louder.  
  
Kagome attempted to talk over the noisy youkai and hanyou. "So the wolf went to the straw house and said, 'Little pig, little pig, let me in!' 'Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.' 'Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!' And the wolf huffed and he puffed and he huffed and he puffed and he blew down the house made of sticks."  
  
"Wait, let me guess," Inuyasha burst out between barks of laughter. "The two brothers ran to the third brother's brick house, and the wolf failed to catch either of them, right?"  
  
Kouga scowled. "That isn't what happens!"  
  
"Um, actually, Kouga, that is what happens in the story. The three brothers all hid in the brick house built by the third brother."  
  
  
  
"The huts in Kaede's village are made of twigs," Miroku observed, "and I don't think even this storm would blow them in. Your story isn't very realistic."  
  
"I know that," Kagome said, "that's why it's called a fairy tale!"  
  
"What's a fairy tale?" Shippou asked.  
  
"Not important," Kagome answered, shaking her head. "So the three little pigs are all in the brick house, okay? And the wolf comes to try to eat the pigs again."  
  
"And the noble wolf blows down the clay house, kills the three pigs, eats the smallest himself, and carries the other two back to his den to feed his mate, his brothers, and his pups!" Kouga finished.  
  
"That story has a good moral," Shippou said, nodding.  
  
"That's not how the story goes!" Kagome cried in frustration.  
  
"What does happen, Kagome?" Sango asks.  
  
Kagome just wants this story over, so she paraphrases. "The wolf can't blow down the house. He leaves, and the three little pigs live together in the brick house."  
  
"Where's the moral in that?" Shippou asks, confused.  
  
Kagome sighed, staring into the fire. "It takes a lot longer to make a house of bricks then it does to make it of straw and sticks. The moral is that you should work hard to build a strong home instead of doing things quickly and not correctly."  
  
Everyone is quiet for a moment. The firelight dances across the faces, one frustrated and the rest confused. Then Shippou's face brightens. "Like with this cave, it would have been quicker to just find a hollow tree to hide in during the storm, and it took longer to find the cave, but the cave is a better shelter because all of you could come too! And Inuyasha had to set up the barrier with his sword, and Miroku and Sango set the fire using Kagome's matches and the wood someone else left for us, and working together we got a much nicer shelter than just hiding in a tree!"  
  
Kagome petted Shippou's head thankfully. "Yes, that's right," she said.  
  
"Before we leave, we should put some more wood in the cave for the next traveler that needs it," Sango said.  
  
"I love a conscientious woman," Miroku said. Kagome wasn't sure just what he did, but she was sure he deserved the slap Sango gave him.  
  
"Well, I for one have never heard such an insulting story in all my life!" Kouga complained. "Do you have no respect for my brothers the wolves? Is that why you keep wandering with this dog-face instead of returning to my den with me?"  
  
"It isn't like that!" Kagome cried. "It's just, this story is European, and the Europeans didn't like wolves because they ate their livestock!"  
  
"Then there must not be any wolf youkai where these u-ro-pee-ns are, or they would understand the nobility of the wolf!" Kouga insisted.  
  
Kagome leaned towards Kouga and patted his arm reassuringly, ignoring Inuyasha's warning growl. "I'm sure that must be it," she answered, deciding not to mention that just before she had met Kouga, he had told his wolf youkai brothers to devour an entire village for supper.  
  
"Then do you know any other wolf stories? One where the wolf is noble and good?" Kouga asked, leaning closer to Kagome. Inuyasha growled louder.  
  
"Well..." Kagome said as she ran through all of the wolf stories she knew. There was "Little Red Riding Hood," but the wolf was the villain in that story, too. She knew Aesop's Fable of the wolf in the vineyard, but that wolf was rather foolish. Oh, wait! "'The Tenth Kingdom!'" she exclaimed. "That story has a very noble wolf."  
  
"Is there a fox in that story?" Shippou asked.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"What about a dog?" Inuyasha wondered.  
  
Kagome blushed. Maybe that wasn't such a good story to tell after all...  
  
****  
  
THE END.  
  
Unless you want to hear Kagome tell the story of "The Tenth Kingdom," but that story is really long... Please review! 


	2. The Tenth Kingdom

Author's Notes: Still don't own Inuyasha. Sorry. It's the truth. I also don't own The Tenth Kingdom, or any of its characters. If you haven't seen The Tenth Kingdom, I definitely recommend it. It is a very long moved (three VHS tapes long), so rent it when you have a Saturday with nothing else you want to do. :) And now, for your reading pleasure, the requested, much anticipated grin continuation of my story...  
  
***  
  
It was dark in the cave, so Kagome wasn't aware that two youkai, a hanyou, and two humans were staring at her, waiting for her to continue what she had been saying. In Kagome's mind she was no longer in a cold, dark cave in feudal Japan, but had just jumped through a travelling mirror in New York City to end up in a land of fantasy and fairy tales come to life.  
  
"Um, Kagome?" Shippou asked from his position on her lap.  
  
Broken out of her imaginations, Kagome looked down at the little kitsune. "Hmm? What is it, Shippou?"  
  
Inuyasha wasn't as polite as the little kitsune. "Hey, bitch, I asked you a question!" he exclaimed.  
  
Kagome bristled at his coarse speech, but knowing that reacting would be counter-productive, she settled on glaring in his general direction. "What did you ask, Inuyasha?" she asked the hanyou.  
  
"Stupid bitch," Inuyasha complained. "You are probably the most educated person in this cave, and you can't even remember a stupid question for thirty seconds." Inuyasha turned to look behind him, trying to figure out what it was Kagome was glaring at, but there was nothing of note behind him. She was impossible to figure out, so he just shrugged and turned back to face the girl. "I asked you if there was a dog in this tenth kingdom story."  
  
Kagome blushed, remembering the question and the reason she had hesitated to answer it. "Umm, yeah, there is a dog in that story, but he is sort of split personality."  
  
"Not nearly as noble as the wolf, is he, Kagome?" Kouga asked to taunt Inuyasha. Inuyasha growled, but Kagome had to agree with Kouga.  
  
"In the story of 'The Tenth Kingdom,' the wolf is noble, but the dog is sort of a prince." Inuyasha stopped growling and grinned foolishly, but then Kagome continued. "And he is a common dog, too. The prince was human, and was cast into the dog's body by a witch. The dog's personality and mind get transferred to the human prince's body in its place, so it is sort of hard to tell which is really the dog in the story." Kagome paused, remembering something. "Actually, now that I think about it, the wolf was really only a half wolf."  
  
Kouga snorted. "A worthless hanyou?" he asked.  
  
"What are you complaining about?" Inuyasha grumbled. "You keep calling Kagome your woman, which she isn't, by the way, but if she were your mate, which she isn't, wouldn't all of your pups be hanyou?"  
  
Kouga didn't have a response ready for this. In fact, that had never occurred to him. He was nothing if he wasn't stubborn, though. "Kagome is still my woman," he answered, ignoring the growl Inuyasha gave in response to that.  
  
"But there are no foxes?" Shippou asked, changing the conversation.  
  
Kagome gave the little kitsune an smile that was both apologetic and appreciative. "Nope, no foxes. Do you want to hear the story anyway, Shippou?" she asked.  
  
Shippou curled up deeper on her lap. "Yeah, go ahead and tell it, but I might fall asleep if there isn't a fox in it," he warned.  
  
Kagome smiled, petting his head. "If you're sleepy, I won't be offended," she said.  
  
"Will you tell the story now, Kagome-sama?" Miroku asked. He couldn't see her, so he didn't realize she was petting the little kitsune.  
  
"Sure, I'll give it a shot, but it's a long story. I'll have to summarize it a lot."  
  
"Just tell it, bitch," Inuyasha complained, turning around once again to try to figure out what Kagome kept glaring at behind him.  
  
Kagome sighed and began her tale. "The story starts in New York City in my time."  
  
"What is a new york city?" Shippou asked.  
  
"New York City is the name of a big city in America. A girl named Virginia lived there with her dad, whose name was Tony. I said Virginia was a girl, but she was all grown up and out of school, although she still lived with her dad."  
  
"She was still unmarried, wasn't she?" Sango asked.  
  
"Yeah, she was single," Kagome answered.  
  
"Then why is it surprising that she had not left her father's household?" Sango wanted to know.  
  
Kagome sighed. The difficulties were already beginning. "In my time, children usually move out of their parents' home once they finish school. Usually they are not married yet when they move out to live on their own."  
  
"Unmarried women living without their fathers' protection?" Miroku marveled with a sigh. His yelp indicated that Sango had probably hit him again.  
  
"Do females in your realm really leave the den unmated?" Kouga wanted to know.  
  
"That is just foolish," Inuyasha complained. "Who protects them?" He turned to glare at Kagome, his eyes sparkling with barely-contained rage. "You will not do such a thing," he told her.  
  
Kagome rolled her eyes.  
  
"No, I'm being serious, bitch. You will not live on your own, as you put it, when you are finished with school," Inuyasha stated.  
  
"Of course she won't," Kouga replied. "She will join me and my brother wolves in our den. She has no need to live on her own. She is my woman."  
  
When the two started communicating in incomprehensible barking and snarling, Kagome tried to change the subject. "I thought you wanted to hear my story," she said, letting her annoyance color her tone. The barking tapered off, although a low rumbling growl continued. Kagome decided to ignore it and speak over it.  
  
"Virginia worked as a waitress, which means she served food at a restaurant, which is like an inn except that nobody sleeps there." She foresaw the next line of questioning and answered it before it could be asked. "In my time, people often eat out even when they are near their homes, just for the convenience. If you are travelling, you stay at a hotel. And, no, Virginia was not a prostitute."  
  
She sighed, then continued. "One night when she was working, she found a handsome golden retriever -- that is a kind of dog. She ended up taking it home with her later that night."  
  
"So she ends up with the dog!" Inuyasha said happily.  
  
"No, she doesn't," Kagome answered. "That same night she also met Wolf."  
  
"What was the wolf's name, Kagome?" Shippou asked.  
  
"Wolf," she replied.  
  
"Huh?" Kouga asked.  
  
"The wolf's name was Wolf. I don't know why. It just is. Virginia didn't know that Wolf was a half-wolf, though; she thought he was just a person. He came to the restaurant's outdoor patio and started sniffing around. He was looking for the dog, but he got distracted by the food the people were eating."  
  
"Isn't that just like a wolf," Inuyasha said, "letting something stupid like that distract him from a hunt!"  
  
Kouga growled, but was otherwise silent.  
  
"Why did the wolf want to find a dog?" Shippou asked.  
  
"Well, it just so happens that the dog was really Prince Wendell, who had been trapped in the body of the dog by an evil witch, who was also the queen and his step-mother. He escaped the queen by jumping through a travelling mirror, sort of like I jump through the well to get to my time, but the mirror took him from his realm, a place of magic, to New York City in my realm, where people don't believe in magic."  
  
"People in your realm don't believe in magic?" Kouga asked, confused. "But I thought you were a miko!"  
  
Kagome sighed. "I am, I think, but I was never trained as a miko in my realm, and I grew up at a temple! Most people just don't believe anymore. Back to the story, though:  
  
"Poor Prince Wendell couldn't talk, so he couldn't tell Virginia what had happened to him. She hid the dog in a storage closet, but when she went back to check on the dog it had knocked over a bag of flour and written something on the floor with his paw, so she knew this dog was special."  
  
"What did he write?" Shippou wanted to know.  
  
Kagome blushed. "I don't know."  
  
"You don't know?" Sango wondered.  
  
"Well, I learned this story by watching a movie -- moving pictures, a concept I will not discuss now -- and the movie is American, where they speak English. My English isn't very good, and I couldn't read whatever it was he was writing!"  
  
Inuyasha laughed. "Stupid bitch. I thought you were studying English, and you can't read better than a common dog?"  
  
Kagome glared at something behind him again before continuing. "Well, Wolf had been sent by the queen to find Prince Wendell, and he tracked him to the restaurant, but when he was there he saw Virginia."  
  
"So Wolf was working for the queen? Was he tricked to do it, like I was tricked to working for Naraku?" Sango asked.  
  
"Not really," Kagome admitted, "but he falls in love with Virginia and helps her instead of the queen." Kagome paused, trying to remember if it was the trolls or Wolf that gave Virginia's father the wishing beans that made him able to understand Prince Wendell, and why exactly Virginia had gone to her grandmother's house that evening. "This story is really too long to tell, guys. Can I give you the really short version?" she begged.  
  
"Sure, Kagome," Shippou said with a yawn, patting her hand reassuringly with his paw.  
  
She patted the little kitsune back before speaking again. "It ended up that Tony -- Virginia's father -- could understand Prince Wendell telepathically because of an accidental wish, and Virginia, Prince Wendell, and Tony went back through the magic travelling mirror to go to the realm of nine kingdoms. You see, the people in the nine kingdoms didn't believe that there was a tenth kingdom, but the tenth kingdom was the world Virginia was from. Wolf followed them and ended up helping them on a journey to Prince Wendell's castle, where he was soon going to be crowned a king.  
  
"They had lots of hardships along the way, and Wolf and Virginia ended up falling in love. They found out that the wicked queen, Prince Wendell's step-mother, was really Virginia's own mother, who had disappeared from New York City years before and was taught black magic by the old wicked queen. They also found out that a man that wrote down a lot of fairy tales in my realm had actually been to the nine kingdoms, and that that was where he got all of his ideas for his stories. That didn't really happen, by the way; it was just a part of this story.  
  
"The dog that inhabited Prince Wendell's human body was crowned king, and Wolf was supposed to poison the kings and queens and rulers that had come to the coronation, but instead he gave them a sleeping potion so the queen would only think they were dead. Virginia ended up killing her mother, although it was in self-defense, meaning she had to do it to protect herself because the queen was trying to kill her. Then all the royal people woke up, and the dog and Prince Wendell's bodies touched, making their spirits and minds go back into the proper bodies. Tony stayed with Wendell, who was now a king, since he didn't like the life he had in New York City, and Wolf told Virginia that he could smell that she was pregnant with his pup. The end."  
  
There was silence as the party tried to assimilate that very-quickly told story. Inuyasha was the first to speak. "Virginia ended up mated to the wolf?" he asked incredulously.  
  
Kouga sniffed. "Of course she did. You thought maybe she was going to end up with the dog? You see, women from Kagome's realm would rather be with a half-breed wolf than a full-blooded dog prince!"  
  
Kagome sighed and leaned back against the wall of the cave, petting the softly snoring kitsune and trying to tune out the barks and snarls that were being passed back and forth over her head. "I am tired," she said, "and I am cold and my clothes are still wet. I am not in the mood for egotistical, territorial, testosterone-driven yapping. Please stop."  
  
While Miroku was impressed with the big words Kagome had just used, and Sango was surprised that Kagome would refer to two canine-youkai displaying over her as yapping, the two canine-youkai seemed to ignore her completely. It was unfortunate that none in the party bothered to remember that Inuyasha's sword, the one that kept his youkai and human blood in balance, was currently holding up the barrier over their shelter and was therefore not in contact with him.  
  
  
  
***  
  
Author's Notes again: Now that I've put in that last line, I guess this story will be getting longer, since I can't really end it here. I'll bet I can get another story in before Inuyasha goes all red-eyed. I've had a request for "The Princess and the Pea." Any other requests?  
  
Oh, and I highly recommend you watch "The Tenth Kingdom" if you can. There is a lot more to it than Kagome's summary look at me, giving Kagome credit for a summary I wrote so it is still worth watching. 


	3. The Princess and the Pea, Snow White Int...

I'm back again! I hadn't planned on updating so soon, but I had so many reviews that I just couldn't resist it! With these reviews came many requests about which fairy tale poor Kagome should tell next. I also had one reviewer exclaim in surprise that my story was starting to show signs of having a plot! grin  
  
You can probably guess by now that I don't own Inuyasha; if he were mine, I certainly wouldn't be airing all of our dirty laundry on the Internet! No, I don't own the beautiful, ill-mannered, ultra-possessive, white-haired hanyou, nor do I own any of the friends/comrades/enemies that are currently sharing the cave-shelter with him to stay out of the rain. I also don't have any rights to any of the fairy tales I mention in this story. The laptop I am typing on belongs to my mother, the Internet connection is at my husband's work, and I am borrowing my inspiration from reviews I have received, so nothing is mine! pout  
  
***  
  
The snarling and barking continued as if Kagome had never spoken. "Miroku- sama," she asked the monk, the only male that was not putting on territorial displays over her or sleeping in her lap, "is your outer robe dry?"  
  
Miroku took his hands out of his heavy sleeves, where they had become quite toasty and comfortable, and patted his outer-most garment. "Yes, it is dry. Do you have need of it, Kagome?" he asked. He couldn't see the girl from the future in the darkness of the cave, which was even darker as the sun had set during her tales, but he imagined she was quite cold in the revealing clothes she always wore.  
  
"Oh, could I borrow it?" she asked. "And could you put more wood on the fire, Sango? I'm hesitant to leave my current position." Sango agreed readily, not wanting to see the fight that could break out if Kagome was no longer sitting between the wolf youkai and the dog hanyou.  
  
As Miroku stood and slipped off his outer robe, he realized how tedious this rest in the cave would become with only the sounds of growls and barks. He was aware that some important conversation was probably going on between the two snarling creatures, but the words were unintelligible to him and the other humans, and Shippou, their translator, had been quiet long enough that he was probably asleep. "I'll let you borrow it if you tell us another story," he told Kagome, bribing her with the heavy robe.  
  
Kagome sighed. "Okay, you've got yourself a deal," she said. Miroku was trying to hand her the robe, but the fire was between them, and she couldn't get up with Shippou on her lap, not to mention the hanyou and the youkai that would leap at each other as soon as she was out of the way. "Kouga," she said, using her sweetest voice. Glowing blue eyes flickered down to her. "Could you please hand me Miroku's robe?"  
  
There was a pause in the growling commentary as Kouga, who was closest to Miroku, reached around the fire, grabbed the robe, and set it on Kagome's shoulders like a cape. Miroku's body heat had been infused into the inside of the outer robe, the heat from the fire into the outside, and Kagome gave a contented sigh as she wriggled her arms into the sleeves and draped excess fabric over her legs, blanketing the still-sleeping kitsune cub. Inuyasha protested Kouga's momentary contact with her, though, and the canine speech quickly resumed.  
  
"What sort of story would you like to hear?" Kagome asked Miroku, trying her best to ignore the hanyou and youkai she was sandwiched between.  
  
Miroku grinned. "I would like to hear a story about a beautiful girl asleep in her bed," he said, anticipating and actually managing to block Sango's attack.  
  
Sango had to settle for a verbal attack instead. "Stupid pervert," she said. "Kagome won't tell you any stories like that."  
  
Kagome hid a smile, although the action wasn't needed, as nobody that was paying attention to her could see her. "Actually, I know the perfect story, Miroku-sama. There once was a prince who wanted to marry because he wanted an heir, but he could not marry for love. He had to keep the royal bloodline pure, so he had to find a real princess. He traveled all over the world to find a real princess, but while there were lots of princesses, he couldn't find any that were a real princess; there was always something about them that was not quite right. The prince went home very sad because he could not find a real princess to give him an heir. Then one evening a woman arrived at the castle that said she was a real princess."  
  
"And he asked her if she would bare him a child?" Miroku asked, laughter in his voice.  
  
Kagome cracked a smile of her own. "No, Miroku-sama, he didn't. The evening was much like this one. A terrible storm had come, with heavy rain, thunder, and lightening." As Kagome spoke these words, lightening crashed outside, very close to their shelter, and she shuddered in response. "You can imagine how the princess looked after having been out in the rain, but the old king let her into the castle because she claimed to be a real princess.  
  
"The queen knew that appearances could be deceiving, so she devised a test to see if this girl was in fact a real princess. She went into the guest bedroom, took all the bedding off the bed, and laid a dried pea on the bottom. Then she piled twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds on top of the pea. The princess slept on this bed all night.  
  
"The next morning, the old queen asked the princess how she had slept. 'Oh, very badly!' the princess replied. 'I hardly slept at all. There was something in the bed that was so hard that I am black and blue all over my body! It is quite horrible!'" Kagome made her voice high-pitched and a little whiney for the princess' voice; the hanyou laid his ears flat, but continued his snarling at the wolf youkai. Kagome continued, not noticing. "Then the queen knew they had found a real princess because only a real princess would be delicate enough to feel a dried pea under twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Then the prince married her, because he had finally found a real princess."  
  
"How happy the prince must have been, to have found a woman to bare him an heir," Miroku sighed happily.  
  
Sango snorted. "If she was that delicate, she couldn't have borne him that many children," she pointed out. "Who would want to be married to a wimpy woman like that, anyway?"  
  
Miroku only had to think about this for a moment. "You are right, Sango- san. I need to find someone strong to bare my heir, a powerful warrior woman that can protect the child and care for him properly." He grinned, knowing that he would be hit for his next comment, but he was unable to resist it. "Are you volunteering?"  
  
The yelp, heard over the snarling and barking, told Kagome that Sango had rejected his offer. Kagome laughed. "If you can behave yourself, Miroku- sama, I know a few more stories about sleeping women that I could tell you."  
  
Now it was Sango's turn to laugh. "I don't think that hentai knows how to behave," she said, "but I for one would like to hear another story."  
  
"Okay," Kagome agreed. "Once upon a time there was a kingdom, and the queen of this kingdom was very beautiful, but she was also very vain. She had a magic mirror that could see all things, and she would look into this mirror and ask, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?' This mirror always told the truth, so day after day it would answer her, 'You are, my queen,' and the queen was pleased. But the queen had a stepdaughter who was also very beautiful. Her name was Snow White, and just like her name she had fair skin, as white as snow. She also had hair as black as night and lips as red as blood, and each day she grew more beautiful, both within and without."  
  
Kagome had just described Miroku's ideal woman, a pampered Japanese princess, and if it hadn't been so dark the group would have seen his drooling, his earlier preference for strong warrior women (who would be tanned and not have time to worry about such things as face powder or lip color) quickly forgotten. Since nobody noticed, Kagome's story continued.  
  
"The day finally arrived when the queen, looking in the mirror and asking, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who it the fairest one of all?' the mirror, which always told the truth, said, 'My queen, you are very fair, but Snow White is fairer still.' She went into a rage, and summoned the royal hunter. She told him to kill Snow White and to bring her back the girl's heart as proof of her death."  
  
Sango gasped. "That is just horrible!" she exclaimed.  
  
"It is horrible," Kagome agreed, "and the huntsman took Snow White deep into the woods, thinking to kill her, but when he saw how beautiful she was, both within and without, he couldn't do it. Instead he warned her to run deep into the woods and never return, for the queen wanted her dead. She ran into the woods, terribly frightened. The huntsman returned to the queen with the heart of a pig instead."  
  
"He was stupid," said a muffled voice from Kagome's lap. Shippou sat up a bit, looking into Kagome's face. "Surely the queen could tell that the heart was from a pig! Pigs and humans smell nothing alike!"  
  
Kagome patted the little kitsune. "I'm afraid that the queen was a human," she explained, "so her sense of smell wasn't very good."  
  
Shippou was shocked. "You mean your sense of smell is that bad?" he asked. He made a show of sniffing the air around him. "Then you probably don't realize that we are both going to smell like the monk, since you're wearing his coat." The kitsune yawned before continuing, "Inuyasha won't like that."  
  
At the sound of his name, a very riled up Inuyasha looked down at Kagome and Shippou. He sniffed the air and made a look of disgust that Kagome couldn't see and growled.  
  
Shippou looked at her expectantly. "What?" Kagome asked.  
  
"You aren't going to do it? That'll really make him mad."  
  
"Do what?" Kagome asked again.  
  
Shippou rolled his eyes and looked at Inuyasha. "She can't understand you when you growl like that, you idiot," he told the hanyou before turning back to Kagome. "He wants you to take off Miroku's outer robe. He says it is making you stink."  
  
"Hey!" Miroku objected from his place across the fire.  
  
"That is silly," Kagome said. "I'm cold. Miroku-sama's robe is warm. I'm not going to take it off just because he thinks it smells bad."  
  
Shippou wisely jumped off Kagome's lap only seconds before Inuyasha hauled her up, one-handed, by the back of Miroku's coat. She squeaked in surprise as she was lifted until her feet were several inches above the ground. She struggled against his hold, trying at first to be released, and then trying to turn around in his grip so she faced him. She stilled when she discovered just how futile these actions were.  
  
"Hey, get your hands off of my woman, dog-face!" Kouga complained, aiming a punch at Inuyasha's head. Inuyasha easily caught the fist in his left hand and squeezed as he growled a warning at the wolf youkai. Kagome, who had been turned so she faced Kouga, her back still to Inuyasha, cringed at the surprised yelp of pain that escaped the wolf.  
  
"Inuyasha, stop it!" Kagome complained, grabbing onto the arm that held Kouga's fist and giving it a tug. Inuyasha's grip held firm, and from Kouga's whimpering and the odd crushing sound she could only guess that his grip on Kouga's fist had tightened.  
  
The firelight flared for a moment before dying down to its original slow burn, and Kagome was shocked to see fear in the youkai wolf's face.  
  
"Stop it, Inuyasha," Kagome repeated. "I think you're hurting him!"  
  
Inuyasha's only response was a feral growl that Kagome thought sounded suspiciously like it was being directed at her. It was far from quiet in the cave, what with the storm still raging outside and the pitiful fire crackling inside, but Inuyasha's growl and Kouga's soft whine were the only other sounds. The rest of the party had gone alarmingly quiet. "Shippou?" she called out, thankful that the 'translator' was awake, "What is going on?"  
  
Shippou's voice was soft and trembling with fear when he finally spoke. "Be very still, Kagome. His eyes are all red."  
  
***  
  
More author's notes:  
  
Look, I put in some plot! These reviews have been so helpful, so please throw some more at me. :) 


	4. Human Brain, Hanyou Brain, and Corpse Ki...

Once Upon a Time Chapter 4: Human Brain, Hanyou Brain, and Corpse Kissing (ewww!) "This is a hanyou brain. This is a hanyou brain on youkai blood. Any questions?" by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
Author's Notes: I am so excited that I have been getting so many reviews for this story! (ducks as ArtemisMoon throws a heavy volume of fairy tales at my head, only to get poked by Aurelia Lothlorien's spork... how cruel!) Every time I check, I have more reviews, and I can't help but smile! :) See? And I don't even own Inuyasha! Do you like how I slipped that in there? Well, last we saw Kagome, a red-eyed Inuyasha was holding her off her feet by the back of Miroku's robe (which apparently stinks, if you have the hanyou or youkai nose to smell it). Perhaps more importantly, her story was interrupted ONCE AGAIN!!! Now we may never know what happens to poor Snow White! grin  
  
***  
  
Kagome used her brain, trained by excessive education (at least when compared to the education of the others in the cave shelter), to analyze her situation. She was dangling helplessly, several inches off the ground, held in place by Inuyasha, who had just lost control of his youkai blood, making him super-crazy super-strong dog-demon-boy. She could always subdue Inuyasha, courtesy of a magic word and Kaede's rosary, but that would probably hurl him into the fire, taking her and Kouga down with him. Or she could... no, wait. There really wasn't anything else she could do, was there?  
  
Well, if the others could somehow get Inuyasha to take back his sword, his transformation would revert, and he would once again be the over- protective, bad-tempered, extremely rude hanyou that she couldn't help liking *that way*, but at least as a sane hanyou he wasn't going to murder them all! But who could get the sword? It was embedded in the rock ceiling of the cave entrance. Kouga couldn't help, since Inuyasha had a firm grip on his most-likely-broken hand, but even if he freed himself his youkai blood wouldn't allow him to touch the sword. Same deal with Shippou -- pure demon blood. Miroku and Sango could touch the sword, but they would never have the strength to pull it out of the solid rock. Besides, it was best if they didn't attract Inuyasha's attention, as they would be pretty useless against an angry inu-youkai -- heck, they were helpless against an inu-hanyou!  
  
And that left... nothing! There was absolutely nothing they could do!  
  
Inuyasha must have realized this at about the same time, because he used Kouga's damaged hand to shove the wolf-youkai away from them. He then manipulated Kagome much like one would a doll, adjusting and readjusting his hold on her as he removed Miroku's outer robe from her person. His grip was firm but not painful; her feet never touched the ground.  
  
Inuyasha threw the robe carelessly to the cave floor, where it landed in the fire. Miroku lunged for it with a curse, pulling it out of the flames before it could fully ignite and beating out the edges that had been lit. Inuyasha ignored him, choosing instead to sniff at Kagome. He gave another growl of displeasure at what he found: Miroku's scent. He adjusted his grip on her yet again, so his hands were on her waist, holding her arm's length away from him. Then he jumped.  
  
Kagome squealed in surprise as Inuyasha's leap flung them out of the cave. Then she yelped as the full force of the icy downpour soaked through her clothes and hair yet again. The night was pitched black between flashes of lightening, the rain was shockingly cold, and for all she knew Inuyasha was holding her over the edge of the cliff outside the cave. She realized that if she tried to sit him, they could both fall over the edge. She tried to control her shivering, worried that his grip on her might slip. She needn't have worried; he held her steady in the pouring rain until she was quite thoroughly drenched. Then he pulled her towards him, nuzzled her hair aside, and gave her neck another sniff.  
  
There was no warning; one moment she was being alternately nuzzled and sniffed by an uninhibited Inu-youkai, and the next moment she was being dangled from only one of Inuyasha's hand as the claws of his other hand shredded her clothes to pieces. As the sodden tatters of cotton and polyester that had been her school uniform fell to the mud, Inuyasha once again gripped her by the waist with both his hands and held her shivering, naked, and shrieking body out in front of him.  
  
***  
  
As Myouga the flea had once explained, the suppression of Inuyasha's human blood due to a loss of control by his youkai blood led to certain changes in the hanyou. His hanyou body was temporarily infused with power, giving him improved speed, strength, pain tolerance, and endurance. His hanyou brain, however, was not structured to be fed by such strong youkai blood, so his thought processes simplified to their most basic. He acted more on instinct then logic, the strongest instinct being survival at any cost. He lost the ability to speak beyond the intuitive inu-youkai language of growls and barks. The dividing lines between friend and foe became blurred and fuzzy, which made him more dangerous. Inhibitions caused by society's rules and his own insecurities floated away.  
  
The normal Inuyasha, with hanyou blood flowing through his hanyou brain, acted with jealousy when Kouga, Miroku, or even Shippou got too close to Kagome, but he would never admit to her that he felt anything for her beyond disgust and tolerance, which were safe emotions. Things like caresses and kisses were threatening and uncomfortable, causing him to growl at Kagome for rubbing his ears even though the act was comforting and felt so very good. He recognized that any expressions of weaker emotions would make him vulnerable, and were therefore meant to be avoided.  
  
The youkai Inuyasha had no such problems. Kagome fascinated him. Kagome liked his fuzzy ears. Kagome was his to protect. Kagome was his to watch over. Kagome was his to care for. Kagome was his. End of discussion.  
  
Kagome was not supposed to be touched by Kouga, and he told the wolf-youkai this in a perfectly clear exhibition of growls and snarls. Kagome was not supposed to cuddle up in Miroku's clothing, transferring the human monk's smell all over her. If she didn't understand this, it was his job to take care of the problem for her. Kouga was not supposed to attack him when he was holding Kagome, and crushing the bones in his hand had probably convinced him of that fact in a way even a stupid wolf-youkai would be slow to forget.  
  
Kagome was not supposed to smell like the monk. The robe had to go.  
  
Kagome's clothes were not supposed to smell like the monk. Maybe rainwater would wash the smell away... If not, the clothes were no longer functioning properly and needed to be removed from Kagome's skin. Wet cloth would probably chill her, anyway.  
  
Kagome's wet, naked skin was much softer to his touch than the rough, unnatural fabric she had been wearing.  
  
Kagome's shrieking was painfully loud and seemed without purpose since his nose detected no nearby dangers. Laying his ears down flat didn't block out all of the sound. Kagome must be afraid. He should reassure Kagome: pull her tight against his body, wrap his arms firmly around her, and gently hold the back of her neck in his fangs. Good, Kagome had stopped making the sound and had gone very still.  
  
Kagome smelled really good now. She no longer smelled like she wore Miroku's robe. She no longer smelled like Shippou had crawled all over her. She no longer smelled like Kouga touched her shoulder. She didn't even smell like those artificial scents from her soaps and lotions. She smelled like Kagome and rainwater.  
  
The rainwater was cold. Kagome shouldn't get cold, because Kagome was fragile. Take Kagome back to the cave. The cave was warmer. Inuyasha removed his teeth from her neck and jumped back into the shelter.  
  
***  
  
If Kagome was frightened into screaming from being stripped naked by Inuyasha's claws, and stunned silent by his arms tight around her body and the pressure of his fangs against her neck, she was horrified back into action when he brought her back into the cave, dripping wet and as bare as the day she was born, in front of the other members of the shard-hunting party (and Kouga).  
  
Several things happened in rapid succession.  
  
Inuyasha set Kagome down on her feet and proceeded to shake, spreading droplets on icy rainwater throughout the cave dwelling. They splattered on the wall, dripped down the hair and clothes of the other members of the party, and sizzled in the pitiful fire.  
  
The two humans and the two youkai were relieved to see that Kagome appeared unharmed by the inu-youkai. Then they noticed her nakedness. Miroku gasped loudly, his eyes wide as he took in the glorious beauty of Kagome, who was young but wondrously developed. Sango gasped in shock that her friend's modesty was being taken for granted, and put her hand over Miroku's eyes. Shippou, remembering that Kagome was body-shy and respecting her feelings, tolerated Sango's other hand over his eyes as well. Kouga didn't have a reaction; he was actually smarter than that. His hand really, really hurt, and the Shikon no Tama shard in his arm wasn't helping him heal as quickly as he thought it should.  
  
Kagome yelped and tried to put Inuyasha between her nudity and everyone else.  
  
Inuyasha took off his red kimono jacket. Kouga covered his own eyes, concerned that the hanyou-turned-crazy-youkai was going to strip, too, but his worries were unfounded. Inuyasha simply turned around towards Kagome, who was hiding behind him, and wrapped her up in the garment of fire-rat fur. She slipped her arms into the very long sleeves (hanyou have longer arms then humans, after all -- how else could Inuyasha run about on all fours like he sometimes does -- and besides that he was a good deal taller than Kagome, so even had he been human his arms would have been longer than hers), and pulled the garment tight against her, gripping it in the front to hold it in place.  
  
Sango removed her hands from the eyes of Miroku and Shippou. Sure, Kagome was showing a lot of leg, and she had seen proof that there were no undergarments under that shirt, but Kagome had showed off a lot more leg before, so it didn't seem to matter. Then she noticed Miroku drooling, and re-covered his eyes before Inuyasha could notice his ogling.  
  
Kagome recognized that Inuyasha's coat was quite warm from his body heat and, amazingly enough, had stayed dry on the inside despite the torrential rain. Then, having recovered a sliver of her dignity, she tossed her head (only to get smacked in the face with sopping wet hair) and started to say that little word she loves to say when she blames her loss of dignity on Inuyasha. Everything seemed to move in slow motion then. Kagome opened her mouth, brought her teeth almost together with her tongue just behind her teeth, and forced air through her vocal cords, producing an "s" sound. Inuyasha's blood-red eyes widened in realization, then narrowed in annoyance.  
  
Then Kagome's jaw opened a bit more, her tongue curling back away from her teeth, forming the "i" in her favorite little word. Inuyasha sprung.  
  
Kagome had her tongue pressed against the back of her two-front teeth, preparing to make the final harsh sound that would force Inuyasha to the cave floor, but she never finished the utterance. She froze, Inuyasha behind her once again, his arms wrapped tight around her, her feet off the ground, and his fangs putting that frightening and yet illogically soothing pressure on the back of her neck.  
  
Remember, Kagome had the most formal education of the organisms in the cave. She could read and write kanji (although even she would admit her penmanship wasn't the best) and the hiragana and katakana that might not have been invented yet in this time (she wasn't sure). She could speak several phrases in American English, although the whole "r" versus "l" problem still threw her pronunciation for a loop, and her reading and writing in English were tolerable, if you ignored her inability to read warnings written in flour by a dog's paw in a made-for-television movie. She had studied Japanese and world history, could do math (although it took her forever to learn it), and could both read music and draw pictures with proper perspective, shaded with obvious light sources. If all of this learning and mental exercise could be boiled down into one simple thought, it was this: don't subdue Inuyasha when he has his fangs pressed into your neck!  
  
Sango's hand fell from Miroku's eyes. She had been taught about such youkai behavior, but had never seen it played out by Inuyasha before. Quickly abandoning any thoughts of interfering, she pondered the implications of Inuyasha's strange treatment of her dearest friend.  
  
Shippou recognized the action and all it could imply. If a youkai was annoyed with another youkai, they usually killed the other youkai or injured it until it was no longer such a bother. The only real exceptions to this were when the other youkai was much stronger than you (in which case you tried to run away), or when the other youkai was a pup, mate, or den-member. When this was the case, a gentle bite to the back of the neck was usually sufficient to reassure the other youkai of their relationship with you, resulting in an end to the disapproved of behavior. His real parents, a loving kitsune couple, had used this behavior modification technique on him when he was unacceptably rowdy or frightened. It had made sense coming from them. What did it mean for Inuyasha to use it on Kagome?  
  
Miroku, always one to speak what he thought, actually chuckled. "Looks like Inuyasha has found a subduing spell of his own," he said.  
  
Inuyasha ignored everyone except Kagome. When he was sure she wouldn't try to pull that stunt again, at least not for a couple minutes, he released her neck and contemplated what to do with her next. Needless to say, he wasn't going to let her out of his arms again! He thought it would be awfully gratifying to take her to the dark recesses of the cave and further reassure her of their relationship in very pleasant ways, but her hair was still wet. Instead, he sat Indian-style in the circle of the fire's warmth, manipulating Kagome until she was facing the fire, her butt resting in the space between his folded legs, her legs bent at the knee and draped over his calves. He kept one arm tight around her chest, pinning her arms to her sides, and used his other arm to brush her hair forward over her face. He leaned forward a bit, pushing her sodden hair closer to the fire's warmth. She felt utterly ridiculous, and would have objected if Inuyasha hadn't started nuzzling his face against her shoulders and neck. She wasn't sure if he was being cuddly or reminding her how easily he could grip her neck again. Either way, it was enough to hold her still.  
  
"You have to admit she looks subdued," Miroku continued when he saw how much Kagome was not going to fight being manipulated by Inuyasha like one of those action figurines Kagome had once brought through the well for Shippou.  
  
Kagome stiffened.  
  
Inuyasha let his eyes flicker to Miroku and let out a growl of annoyance for the effect the mortal's words were having on Kagome.  
  
Shippou understood the growl, and elbowed Miroku, trying to shut him up.  
  
There was then a long silence, during which Kagome's hair started to dry, Kouga's hand started to mend, Shippou started to nod off, Sango started shifting as she noticed not for the first time just how hard the cave floor really was, and Miroku let his mind wander to all the beautiful women he had met before. This led, of course, to thoughts of women in bed (and doing bed-worthy activities in other readily available places), which then led to thoughts about Kagome's stories. 'Whatever happened to that beautiful princess, Snow White?' he wondered.  
  
"Hey, Kagome," he asked, "whatever happened to that beautiful princess, Snow White?"  
  
"What about her?" Kagome asked. She was sitting on Inuyasha's lap, bent forward, her hair over her face, as he alternately nuzzled, sniffdd, and -- thank goodness the others couldn't tell -- licked her neck. Snow White was one of the furthest things from her mind at the moment.  
  
Inuyasha hadn't growled, and Shippou hadn't elbowed him again, so Miroku continued. "Well, when the story got interrupted before, Snow White had been dropped off in the forest by the queen's huntsman, and the huntsman was planning on bringing the queen the heart of a pig instead of Snow White's heart."  
  
Inuyasha actually paused in his ministrations long enough to snort, apparently in agreement of Shippou's earlier thoughts that such a substitution was ridiculous and doomed to fail.  
  
Not appreciating Inuyasha's attitude, she decided to continue the story with the hopes that it might annoy him. "Yes, well, the huntsman did return to the queen with the heart of a pig, and she fell for the trick, once again confident that she was the most beautiful woman in the land."  
  
Shippou's snort mirrored Inuyasha's earlier one. Kagome ignored it.  
  
"The princess, Snow White, didn't know the woods, and the more she ran the more lost she became. She was scared, and the tree limbs seemed to reach out and grab at her as she ran."  
  
"Plant youkai?" Shippou squeaked, clinging to Sango in fear. Sango knocked him off of her.  
  
"No, it was just her imagination," Kagome clarified. Inuyasha had resumed his nuzzling, sniffing, and licking against her neck, and it was becoming a struggle to stay focused, but she was determined. "She tore her dress on brambles, her hair got tangled in branches, and she tripped over roots. She was very tired and wondered if she would ever be able to rest again. Then she found a cottage. It was a little cottage with a little door and little windows."  
  
"Was it made of straw, sticks, or bricks?" Kouga wanted to know.  
  
"Um, I think it was made of wood, but I'm not really sure," Kagome replied. She almost expected Inuyasha to give some comments insulting her intelligence or belittling stories from her time, but he appeared preoccupied with her neck... 'Not that he had ever spoken in his youkai form,' she reminded herself. He seemed to be doing less sniffing and more licking, his long tongue, rough like a cat's but to a lesser extent, laving over her. She shuddered despite herself, and she wasn't sure it was with disgust.  
  
"So, she knocked on the door of the cottage, but nobody answered," Kagome managed to say, a little tremor in her voice that the humans didn't detect but that Inuyasha certainly did. He combed through her damp hair with his free hand, careful not to snag her hair with his claws. Soon Kagome's hair would finish drying and he could take her away from the circle of the fire's warmth.  
  
The humans in the group didn't understand why Kagome had paused in her narration. Kouga and Shippou, with their youkai eyesight, knew exactly what was going on between Kagome and Inuyasha. Kouga contemplated leaving the cave shelter, but settled for distracting Kagome instead. "Nobody was home, or they just didn't want visitors?" he asked her.  
  
"Hmm, what? Oh, nobody was home," she answered, refocusing on the story. "She was so tired, though, that she entered the house anyway. The cottage was strangely furnished. There was a long table with seven tiny chairs, and there were seven plates and seven cups, all dirty from the last meal. Everything was dusty, and she was tempted to tidy up, but she felt safe in this cottage."  
  
"Why would a princess do servant's tasks?" Sango wanted to know.  
  
"Kagome must have meant that she wanted to see the cottage clean, Sango. A princess would never do servant's work," Miroku said.  
  
"No, she didn't see herself that way," Kagome explained. "She didn't mind cleaning. In fact, she was the kind of person that liked to keep busy. If she saw something that needed to be done, she would just do it. Anyway, she saw a staircase leading up, so she climbed the stairs, curious. Upstairs she found seven tiny beds, so she decided that there must have been seven messy children living in this cottage."  
  
"Pups? Living by themselves? That is ridiculous!" Kouga complained.  
  
"I know you said unmarried women can live on their own in your time," Miroku said, still relishing that concept, "but are children forced to live alone as well?"  
  
"Oh, not at all," Kagome explained. "In my time, there are all sorts of laws and rules about caring for children. Children never live alone. Even if their parents die and there are no other relatives, there are orphanages where the children can live. There they go to school and are fed and have people taking care of them." This idea was so foreign to the group that even Inuyasha paused in the tongue-bath he was giving Kagome... but only for a moment.  
  
"So they weren't children?" Miroku asked.  
  
"No, but I'll get to that later," Kagome said. "She was so tired that she pushed three of the beds together and laid across them, since they were too short for her otherwise. She quickly fell asleep."  
  
Inuyasha gave a soft growl of displeasure and gripped Kagome's neck in his fangs once again. Kagome gave a surprised yelp. Shippou decided to translate. "Um, Inuyasha wants to make sure you know never to do something as stupid as fall asleep in a stranger's house like that," the little fox said, translating both the growl and the possessive action. Inuyasha's growl didn't cease, so Shippou continued. "Kagome, you need to tell him that you wouldn't do something like that."  
  
She was hesitant to speak, being held as she was. Inuyasha's growl vibrated from his chest to her back and from his mouth into her very spine. The pressure of his teeth increased just a fraction, and that spurred her into action with another yelp. "No, of course I wouldn't do that," she rushed to say. "I always let you check out a place first, Inuyasha."  
  
He seemed pleased with this response, lessening the pressure on her neck, although he kept his teeth in place.  
  
"Just continue the story, Kagome," Shippou counseled.  
  
It was hard to think, but Kagome tried to follow Shippou's advice. "Well, of course the owners of the house came home when she was still asleep." Inuyasha gave a short growl of displeasure, but let Kagome continue. "It ended up that they weren't children at all, but dwarves! They told her she could stay with them as long as she kept house for them, but she thought that was a great exchange." Kagome noticed that she was rushing the story now, but Inuyasha's teeth were unnerving her.  
  
"Of course, one day the queen looked in her mirror again and asked who the fairest in the land was. The mirror always told the truth, so it told the queen that Snow White still lived, and that this girl was the fairest in the land. The queen was furious, and she cast a spell that gave her the appearance of an old woman. She went to the cottage during the day, when the dwarves were working in their mine, for that is what dwarves do. At this point the story sort of branches out, depending on who tells it. In some stories, the queen gives Snow White a poisoned comb that scratches her scalp. In some, she laces her up too tightly in a corset, a garment women used to wear to make them look thinner. In other stories, she gives Snow White a poisoned apple. Sometimes, all three occur. The end result is always the same, though: Snow White dies."  
  
"That's it? She dies?" Sango wanted to know.  
  
"I thought this was a story about a girl in bed!" Miroku exclaimed.  
  
"Well, it still is. You see, the dwarves thought she was too beautiful to be buried, so they built her a coffin made of glass and surrounded her with beautiful flowers, but her beauty was more than that of the flowers. She stayed there for a long time, looking asleep, staying beautiful. In fact, she stayed so beautiful that one day a prince, who was riding his horse through the forest, came across the glass coffin. The girl was so beautiful that he kissed her..."  
  
"He kissed a corpse?" Kouga exclaimed loudly.  
  
"That's disgusting!" Sango agreed.  
  
"Even I wouldn't do that," Miroku added.  
  
Shippou stifled a laugh. "Inuyasha did," he snickered. "He kissed Kikyou, and she has been dead for over 50 years!"  
  
***  
  
Author's Notes: Hmm, Shippou, maybe it isn't such a good idea to taunt the not-quite-sane-at-the-moment inu-youkai... Well, everyone should be very happy that I wrote such a long chapter, much longer than any of the previous three (I checked the word count). Let me know if you think I should add some material in the next chapter that will nudge the rating up to an R... 


	5. Takes a Licking, Keeps on Ticking: Still...

Once Upon a Time Chapter 5: Takes a Licking, Keeps on Ticking by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
Author's Notes: I would love to thank Aurelia Lothlorien for putting that dreadful spork away. Getting poked by a spork is almost as bad as being pinched by chopsticks! Oh, no, I've just given reviewers an idea, haven't I?  
  
Actually, I am feeling great elation right now. I only posted Chapter 4 maybe six hours ago, and I already have over 20 reviews for that chapter! I have never had so many loyal readers before! Most people wanted me to get on with Inuyasha's reassuring Kagome, so I'll just have to see what I can do! (You can get a lot of sexual tension in a story without character nakedness. Has anyone read my Sailor Moon story, "It's In His Kiss"? Of course, Kagome has already been naked in this story, hasn't she?)  
  
Well, the last chapter ended with Kagome sitting on Inuyasha's lap, her naked under his red fire-rat fur kimono jacket, his fangs holding onto the back of her neck, while she continued telling the story of Snow White. Talk about a feat of concentration!  
  
***  
  
Inuyasha felt Kagome stiffen once again, and he set to work at making her relax. He didn't respond to Shippou's words at all! No fits of embarrassed fury, no justifying his actions or explaining how he owed Kikyou something because he was supposed to have died with her -- nothing. His lack of response was more unsettling to the members of the shard- hunting party than if he had attacked Shippou! Instead, all of Inuyasha's attention was focused on Kagome, a definite sign that he was not in his usual frame of mind.  
  
Kagome, of course, had reacted to Shippou's not-so-veiled reminder of Kikyou, the reanimated clay-and-bone form of her preincarnation, powered with a slip of Kagome's own soul and the stolen souls of deceased girls. Inuyasha had chosen Kikyou over her time and time again, and quite frankly the reminder physically hurt.  
  
According to Inuyasha's view at the moment, the only things worth considering were within this cave, and the only thing worthy of his mindfulness was the living human girl from the future that he had trapped within his arms, and she was upset without reason. Removing his teeth from her neck but keeping one arm tight around Kagome's chest, still pinning her arms to her sides, Inuyasha used his other arm to grasp her inner thigh just below the hem of the red fire-rat fur kimono jacket. Kagome's attention was pulled away from Kikyou thoughts as he used this hand-hold to lift Kagome and settle her body back into his own, her rear-end pressing against his pelvis. He unfolded his legs, stretching them under her own bent legs, before trapping her ankles under his. At the end of his adjustments, Kagome was sitting on Inuyasha's lap, his legs wound around hers, his hand still nestled on the curve of her inner thigh, holding her in place.  
  
Thus situated, Inuyasha reintroduced his fangs to Kagome's neck, holding her in place as he removed the arm that had pinning her arms to her sides and ran his clawed fingers through her hair, which still hung over her face. The locks were dry at the ends, but still a bit damp at the roots. He swept her hair back out of her face, stroking it as if he were petting a cat, and released his teeth from her neck once again to sniff at the locks. Soon he would be able to leave the circle of heat by the fire and warm Kagome in his own way.  
  
Inuyasha was making the only sounds in the cave if one ignored the storm outside and the crackling of the fire. *sniff* contented growl *sniff* suspicious slurping sound as he gave her neck another lick *sniff*  
  
"Prince Charming kissed Snow White and she woke up," Kagome blurted out, her voice shaky and a little too loud, echoing off the walls of the cave. There was a surprised silence, during which Inuyasha nuzzled Kagome's neck a little more aggressively, since she still seemed tense. She needed a lot of reassurances. contented growl *sniff* suspicious slurping sound as he gave her neck another lick  
  
The sounds, muted to the humans, screamed to the two youkai, who unfortunately could also see what was going on quite plainly. Kouga was as happy to break up the sound with speech as Kagome had been. He cleared his throat. "So," he began, "the prince's name was Charming?"  
  
"Who cares about that?" Sango wanted to know. "He kissed a corpse and she reanimated! Was he a sorcerer, Kagome?"  
  
"Could she still bare children?" Miroku wanted to know.  
  
Kagome was happy to focus on their questions rather than the strange feelings Inuyasha's ministrations were starting to cause in her. "Well, yes, his name was Prince Charming in the story, but that isn't a real name in my time. I think it was made up for the story. And no, he wasn't a sorcerer. He was just able to break the spell with true love's first kiss."  
  
*sniff* contented growl *sniff* suspicious slurping sound as he gave her neck another lick *sniff*  
  
"True love?" Sango asked. "But he hadn't even spoken to her! All he did was see her, lying in a coffin, and he fell in love with her?"  
  
There was a shuffling of fabric as Miroku, who had his singed outer robe on again, scooted towards Sango. "Sometimes that is all it takes," he said. Kagome heard a slap, and Miroku yelped.  
  
*sniff* contented growl *sniff* suspicious slurping sound as he gave her neck another lick *sniff*  
  
"Um, Miroku, what was your question again?" Kagome asked. "Oh, wait, I remember. Well, the story never says specifically that they have children, but it does say that they live happily ever after, so most likely they did."  
  
*sniff* contented growl *sniff* suspicious slurping sound as he gave her neck another lick *sniff*  
  
Kagome shuddered despite herself. Very hesitantly, Kagome took advantage of Inuyasha's distraction and moved her arms from her sides, where they had been pinned for some time. When he continued running his fingers through her hair and nuzzling against her, she grew bolder and attempted to pull the hem of her garment a little lower on her legs. She squirmed a little, trying to free some of the fabric that had ridden up when Inuyasha adjusted their positions.  
  
In response to her wiggling, Inuyasha clutched at her thigh in a convulsive movement before pulling her much tighter against his lap, again in an attempt to reassure her of their relationship to each other. Kagome couldn't prevent the gasp that escaped her when she felt *something* there that she hadn't noticed before. His hand had slipped even higher up her leg, and his fingers varied their pressure in teasing patterns. She squeezed her eyes shut.  
  
On the other side of the fire, Kouga also closed his eyes. Enough was enough! He knew he had to make a choice: steal Kagome back from Inuyasha before the dog-face claimed her fully as his mate, or leave before the smell of sexual tension drove him crazy. His hand throbbed in pain.  
  
Kouga left the cave. Kagome never noticed.  
  
  
  
***  
  
Author's Notes: I hope none of you are mad about Inuyasha's total disregard for Shippou's comments. I know, I set it up like it was going to be a really big thing, but it would seem sort of out of character (for my inu- youkai) if he all of a sudden started paying attention to the other people in the group. So far he has only reacted to things Kagome has done/said and to comments/actions of others that directly threaten his relationship with Kagome. When Shippou said his comments, Inuyasha had his arms and lap full of sweet-smelling Kagome. Why should he let a weak little kitsune- youkai distract him from that? (Think about it; if you have Inuyasha in your grasp and you are petting his fuzzy little ears, will you even notice Shippou? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now, if he turned into a pink bubble and started gnawing on your head, that might be an entirely different story.)  
  
Have any of you wondered about this: Why did Inuyasha lose control of his youkai blood? The flea had described this transformation to a crazed inu- youkai as a survival mechanism that only kicked when Inuyasha was threatened and helpless! True, Inuyasha wasn't holding his sword, which bound up his youkai blood, but did this situation that required survival mechanisms? He wasn't injured (unless wounded pride counted, as she had refused to take off Miroku's jacket). He wasn't under attack (unless you counted the extensive verbal battle he had been engaged in with Kouga and the little punch Kouga had thrown in his direction). So why would he feel threatened? 


	6. Desperately Seeking Distractions

Once Upon a Time Chapter 6  
  
Aisuru says: Of course I don't own Inuyasha or any of his friends, enemies, rivals, or family members... I'm just twisting them for my own purposes. I apologize for waiting so long to write and post this chapter, but I have no real excuses to give you except for my new interest in Kenshin. I guess I just have a thing for guys with violent, possessive alter egos! Thank you for all the reviews, and please send more. :)  
  
I have been made aware of several aspects of my story that are totally untrue when compared to the show, the most blatant being that Inuyasha CAN speak in his crazy red-eyed form. I managed to forget all about that when I started this story, so please just pretend for the sake of my story that he can't. Bashful grin  
  
Did you know that a baby fox could be called either a kit or a pup? I just looked it up...  
  
***  
  
Inuyasha allowed himself a grunt of pleasure at Kouga's departure from the cave dwelling. Now all was right in his world. Kagome was cradled in his lap, her legs pinned down by his, the naked skin of her thigh warm against his fingertips, her backside pressed firmly against his pelvis in a manner that made clear to Kagome her status in his unusual pack. Inuyasha's scent was the only one to be found on Kagome, and her hair was almost completely dry...  
  
If Kagome had known the purpose behind Inuyasha's diligent attention to her hair, she would have gone into a full panic. She would have used her full miko power and energy-blasted some sense into him, or subdued him a dozen times, even if it meant him slamming both of them forcefully into the ground, dangerously close to the fire. She just might have done anything to bring her cocky, loud-mouthed, rude inu-hanyou back if she had any idea what his more-youkai counterpart was thinking at the moment. Unfortunately, she hadn't a clue, so she remained nestled in his lap, trying not to fidget while hoping not to relax too much at the calming feeling of having him finger-comb her hair.  
  
Instead she attributed the feel of his, well, evidence of having reached male sexual maturity, to the fact that he had seen her naked in the rain. He was a male, after all, and even though she wasn't sure exactly how these things worked - not with human males and certainly not with hanyou ales under the control of their youkai blood - she knew she was young and not unpleasant to look at. Either that, or his awakening, if it was proper to think of it like that - if it was proper to think of it al all - was the result of friction. After all, his hand on her leg - her naked inner thigh - was pushing her right into him, and she was wiggling, wasn't she?  
  
She found an unwelcome memory of an overheard conversation flitter into her mind, the remembrance coupled with sudden understanding as Inuyasha shifted her in his lap so she felt his substantial maleness pressed into the underside of her right thigh.  
  
Boy #1: How's it hanging? Boy #2: A little to the right.  
  
Kagome was thankful that Inuyasha's unexplainable interest in her hair had pushed the mass over her face so that her sudden blush was hidden from view. She wondered how naïve she had been in the past, to entirely miss the sexual undertones to what she had seen as a nonsensical response to a perfectly civil greeting. She wondered what other innuendoes she had discounted as innocent when they were anything but. Kagome shifted, unpleased with the idea.  
  
Inuyasha adjusted her in his lap again, pressing himself against her with more obvious intent.  
  
Kagome made the decision to sit very, very still.  
  
She also made the decision to try to distract herself, and Inuyasha if at all possible, from their intimate position. 'I mean, is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?' she wondered. 'What I wouldn't do right now for a bucket of cold water!'  
  
Cold water... that was it!  
  
"I have another story to tell you!" Kagome announced, proud that an idea for a distraction had occurred to her. Her voice was a little muffled by the hair hanging over her face, still being finger-combed by Inuyasha.  
  
"Another story, Kagome-sama?" Miroku questioned. When Kouga had left like that, in such a sudden hurry, and Kagome had grown so suddenly quiet, he had been sure he wasn't going to be hearing from Kagome again this night.  
  
"Yes, another story. It is a Japanese story; actually it is an anime, a story told on television by animation." She paused to address Inuyasha directly. "You remember anime, don't you, Inuyasha?"  
  
His hand clenched against her thigh and she felt him smile against the back of her neck at the sound of her saying his name, but he gave no other response.  
  
"Um, yeah," Kagome muttered before redirecting her words to an audience that would actually listen. "It is about a boy named Ranma that was a student of martial arts. His father took him to China..."  
  
"Why would his father take him to China, of all places?" Sango demanded.  
  
'I forgot that China and Japan are big enemies in this time,' Kagome thought. "Well, in my time the world is much more united," she finally said. "We trade with China and just about everybody else in the world. There would be nothing too unusual about going to China to train."  
  
"Hmph, if you say so," Sango grumbled. "But my family has been fighting youkai for generations, and we never had to rely on any Chinese techniques!"  
  
Kagome didn't miss the underlying pride in Sango's voice, or the sadness as she remembered her village, which had been entirely destroyed by Naraku's trickery. Rather then offering condolences, which Sango, with her constant need to be strong, wouldn't appreciate, Kagome continued with her story. "So his father took him to China to train. Unfortunately for Ranma, his father took him to train at the cursed springs. It was a region filled with springs, and Ranma and his father were fighting around and over the springs, as their style of martial arts involved a lot of high jumping. The springs were cursed, though, as I said, so that anyone falling into one of the springs would turn into whatever had drowned there hundreds of years before. They would only stay in that form until they were doused with hot water, but getting wet with cold water, including rain water, would turn them back into their alternate form."  
  
"That isn't such a bad curse," Miroku commented. Kagome could hear the prayer beads that sealed his cursed hand clinking together as he flexed his fingers. "At least these people don't have to worry about being sucked into a black hole one day!"  
  
"You might think that now, Miroku, but Ranma did fall into one of the cursed springs, and that is when all of his troubles began."  
  
"What sort of troubles? So he has to avoid getting wet in front of people. So what?"  
  
"Well, Miroku, it just so happens that Ranma fell into a spring that a voluptuous red-headed girl had drowned in, so when Ranma gets wet..."  
  
"He becomes a she?" Sango interrupted with a laugh.  
  
"With breasts and everything!" Kagome replied with a giggle of her own.  
  
Miroku gasped in horror, and Kagome heard a rustling of fabric as he scooted away from the girls. "How can you find humor in such a, a, a demasculization?" he accused.  
  
"What?" Sango teased, her thoughts distracted from sad memories of her family. "It is funny! What about Ranma's father? How did he take it?"  
  
"Well, Ranma's father had two problems. The first problem is that, when he took Ranma on this trip, he promised Ranma's mother that he would bring their son back as a real man..."  
  
"And now he is only half a man!" Sango choked out through her laughter.  
  
"And," Kagome continued, "the second problem is that he also fell into a spring. Now, whenever he gets wet, he turns into a panda bear."  
  
"Oh. Well, being a panda isn't such a bad curse," Miroku said, secure in the thought that at least the father's curse wasn't as bad as his. As for Ranma, though... Miroku could only shudder at the thought.  
  
"Not really. He actually uses it to get out of doing things. He just turns himself into a panda and plays games all day. He can't talk, though, so he has to hold up signs."  
  
"What?" Shippou asked, apparently awake. "I understand not being able to talk, since my parents couldn't talk in words when they were in their full kitsune forms, but my parents couldn't exactly write in that form either."  
  
"It's just a cartoon, Shippou," was Kagome's reply.  
  
"What's that?" Shippou wanted to know.  
  
"Well, in a cartoon, also called animation, an artist draws lots of pictures, and they are flashed in front of you very quickly, with slight changes to each picture, so it looks like the drawings are moving. We can watch Ranma and his dad and all the other characters doing things, but they are just drawings. They aren't real."  
  
"Kagome," Sango said after a pause. "That makes absolutely no sense at all. Are you delusional or something?"  
  
"Oh, I sure hope so!" Miroku exclaimed. "Please, Kagome, tell me you've caught a fever or something from being out in the rain. That whole thing about a man turning into a girl," he choked as he said these words, "just sounds too crazy to be real."  
  
"But it isn't real!" Kagome exclaimed. "It is animation! A story told with moving pictures."  
  
"Kagome, pictures can't move," Shippou said, speaking very slowly as if she were an idiot. "What did that stupid hanyou do to you?"  
  
"Guys, I'm not sick!" she exclaimed, realizing that she was actually quite warm cuddled up as she was in Inuyasha's lap. "Inuyasha's fire-rat jacket is warm, the fire is warm, and I'm not even wet anymore!"  
  
"Lucky you," Sango muttered, her clothes still uncomfortably damp. She didn't have time to say anything else before Inuyasha was coming to his feet, pulling Kagome up with him, one hand still on her leg and the other wrapped across her chest under her breasts.  
  
"Wh- What?" Kagome asked, confused by the sudden motion. "Hey, Inuyasha, put me down! You aren't going to put me out in the rain again, are you?" While Kagome was busy panicking, Sango was clamping her hand over Miroku's eyes. Kagome was very close to the fire, and when Inuyasha pulled her up he was inadvertently exposing Kagome's long legs (and Inuyasha's hold on her inner thigh) to the only source of light in the cave. 


	7. Who Can It Be Now

Once Upon a Time Chapter 7  
  
By Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
Sango may have had her hand over Miroku's eyes, but that brief flash of erotica that he had been gifted with had been burned into his retinas for him to enjoy again, and again, and again... The sounds of Kagome's struggles, which were of course futile but burned in Miroku's ears like just so much more erotica, did not move towards the entrance of the cave, where Kagome feared more cold rain water awaited her, but towards the back of the cave, out of reach of the heat and light of the fire. "What is happening?" Miroku asked Sango, the huskiness of his voice doing little to disguise the effect being witness to this confrontation was having on him.  
  
Sango's voice was unsteady when she answered. "He's, well, um, he seems to be taking her to the back of the cave, and, um, well..." There was a pause, and Miroku feared that he would get no more details out of the demon exterminator, when she suddenly exclaimed, still whispering, "Did you see where he had his hand!"  
  
Miroku nodded, and although Sango couldn't see Miroku very well in the dimness of the cave, she felt the nod, since her hand was still on his face. The hanyou and the miko were no longer in the circle of light, and Sango quickly removed her hand from Miroku's eyes, going so far as to scoot a ways away from him, wanting to risk no contact with the male, just in case whatever Inuyasha had caught might be contagious. 'Okay, so it isn't likely that Miroku is going to go youkai on us and start acting all possessive and dominating,' Sango shuddered at the thought, but if she was honest with herself - which she wasn't - she wasn't sure if her shudder was revulsion or anticipation at the thought of Miroku being possessive towards her and not just any female that came around.  
  
"Hey, Inuyasha," Shippou yelled after the hanyou, startling both Sango and Miroku, who had lost themselves in very adult musings. "Where are you taking Kagome?" Concern for the girl, who was threatening to subdue Inuyasha if he didn't put her down this instant, was overriding his fear of Inuyasha in his current state.  
  
Miroku grabbed hold of Shippou's tail as the little kitsune youkai started towards the back of the cave. "Kagome can take care of herself when it comes to Inuyasha," he told Shippou, pretty sure that he was lying in this particular instance, but it was either tell a little white lie or listen to the fox child get torn limb from limb by Inuyasha for disturbing... whatever... was going on... in the back of the cave. Miroku's fingers twitched and then went limp at this train of thought. He dropped Shippou.  
  
Before Shippou had a chance to hit the ground, Sango had hold of his tail. Miroku grinned down at the demon exterminator, who had sprawled herself across his lap in her rush to catch the child, and Sango immediately righted herself, elbowing Miroku in the ribs as she sat up. "Oh, oops," she said, not at all apologetically.  
  
She turned her attention back to Shippou. "We aren't sure what is going on either," she told the fox. When Miroku cleared his throat meaningfully, she added, "exactly. We aren't sure exactly what is going on, but you know that Kagome is strong, right?" At Shippou's hesitant nod she continued. "And has Inuyasha ever hurt Kagome?"  
  
Shippou's eyes grew wide. "The first day that he met her he tried to kill her! That is why Kaede made him wear the rosary necklace!"  
  
"Yes, that is true," Miroku muttered, wondering if Kagome being carted off by an amorous Inuyasha was maybe less erotic then he had thought and maybe more along the lines of a dinner for one. He started to rise, unwilling to sit safely by the fire while Kagome was eaten (in a literal, non-innuendo sense), but Sango grabbed at his robe, pulling him back.  
  
"He isn't going to kill her!" she whispered harshly. She blew her damp bangs out of her face in exasperation, both hands occupied with holding back the two males. "Don't you guys know anything about youkai?"  
  
"I AM a youkai!" Shippou exclaimed, clearly offended.  
  
Sango rolled her eyes. "Yes, I suppose you are. Look, if Inuyasha was planning on killing Kagome, do you think he would have spent the last half- hour combing her hair in front of the fire? Do youkai have some sort of weird dietary requirements specifying that their meals have well-groomed hair?"  
  
Shippou, who had never actually eaten a human, paused to think about this. Miroku bopped the kit on the head. "Of course not, Sango-chan," Miroku answered, sitting down again for another enlightening lesson on youkai from the life-long youkai exterminator. "If he was going to eat her, he would have eaten her already." He paused, flashing Sango a hentai grin. "You don't think they've already gone that far, do you?"  
  
The rest of the lesson was lost, as Sango beamed Miroku on the head with her bone boomerang. She was kind enough to pull the unconscious man away from the fire, but she paid no mind to his position, almost guaranteeing a stiff neck as well as a killer headache when he woke up. "Serves him right," she mumbled.  
  
"I don't get it," Shippou pouted.  
  
***  
  
Meanwhile, in the back of the cave, away from the light and warmth of the little fire, the confrontation, if it could be called that, between Kagome and Inuyasha continued. Inuyasha's thoughts as he carried Kagome from her spot by the fire to the back of the cave were very primal and instinctual. Kagome was no longer wet (she had admitted as much herself). Kagome was wriggling in his hold as if she wanted to escape, which only meant that she really needed more reassurances of her importance to him. Reassuring her would prove to be very pleasant, and he was looking forward to it.  
  
Kagome's thoughts were much more scattered, but she also had a primal urge: run! Escape! Get far, far away from the very strong, very attentive, frighteningly cuddly Inuyasha that seemed to be finding much too much enjoyment from her current predicament, namely that her bare feet were dangling several inches off the ground and she was being held in the air by the hand that reached in front of her body, holding her thigh, and the other arm, which was holding her across the chest under her breasts. Inuyasha shifted his hold, lifting her higher against his body. The feel of his maleness pushing against her bottom through his hakama distracted her from the hand that shifted to grasp her breast.  
  
Kagome froze. Inuyasha took that as a good sign, a sign of acceptance, a sign of understanding, and nuzzled her throat to show her his pleasure. Then he lowered her, stooping so he could release his hand from her leg, and let her gain her balance, intending to remove his own clothes and use them to form a comfortable nest on the cold, hard floor of the cave, another benefit of wearing fire-rat fur.  
  
Kagome's understanding was of a different sort. As soon as her feet touched the ground and Inuyasha gave her a final embrace before releasing her (and reaching for the ties of his hakama), Kagome bolted. Or she would have, if Inuyasha's reflexes hadn't been youkai fast at the moment. Okay, she couldn't have bolted with his hanyou reflexes either, but the point is that he easily caught the back of the fire-rat jacket she wore - the only clothing she wore - and she squeaked in surprise. She was then faced with the choice of remaining with Inuyasha or wriggling out of the jacket and running stark naked towards the fire (and Miroku, who she didn't realize had been rendered unconscious). She hesitated, giving Inuyasha the opportunity to wrap her in his arms and pull her back to him.  
  
***  
  
Sango jumped to her feet at the sound of Kagome's cry, and was considering ignoring her own advice and rushing to aid the girl from the future, when she felt Shippou tug on the hem of her kimono. She looked down at him impatiently, but in the glow of the fire she could tell that his cute little face was not looking at her, but towards the entrance of the cave. She turned her own face towards the storm, peering blindly into the darkness. A sudden flash of lightening lit the sky, and Sango gave a scream of her own.  
  
Sesshoumaru was standing outside, a little girl in a green kimono holding his hand. 


	8. Stupid Liars!

Once Upon a Time Chapter 8 by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
*****  
  
Author's Note: 387 reviews! Now I feel so guilty for not writing in so long! Let's see what I can do to fix this problem.  
  
*****  
  
Lightening flashed across the sky, illuminating Sesshoumaru. The inu- youkai lord stood as still as a statue, his head held high. Rainwater ran in rivulets down the sculpted angles of his face. His sodden snow-white bangs hung limply over fearless amber eyes. Water dripped off the spikes of his armor, plastered his soggy tail to his shoulder, and rendered portions of his kimono clingy and transparent, but somehow Sango couldn't imagine Sesshoumaru shaking himself dry as his half-brother had done.  
  
"Sesshoumaru-sama," the little girl asked, daring to tug on one of his waterlogged, elaborate sleeves. "Why is the funny lady yelling like that?"  
  
The inu-youkai did not bother himself to answer the little human girl, instead keeping his steady gaze on Sango with the unique mixture of curiosity and bored disdain that only Sesshoumaru could pull off. He raised an eyebrow. Sango stopped screaming.  
  
Sesshoumaru's face resumed his typical blank expression. For long moments the only sounds Sango heard were those of the storm outside the cave and the crackling of the weak fire within. Then Sesshoumaru broke the silence with a voice that dreadfully understated his power and authority. "Rin," he said, addressing the little girl.  
  
The child's face lit up as if, by saying her name, the inu-youkai lord had gifted her with an extraordinary and unexpected surprise. "Hai, Sesshoumaru-sama!" she replied, straightening her posture and turning her face up to look at him. Sesshoumaru kept his unwavering gaze on Sango.  
  
"Go into the cave and warm yourself by the fire."  
  
The little girl's face lit up even more, and she ran eagerly through the Tetsusaiga's barrier and into the cave. Sango shifted her weight to catch the child before she ran any closer to the inner depths of the cave. The girl looked up at Sango, her confusion clearly visible in the wavering firelight. Sesshoumaru, outside the Tetsusaiga's barrier, growled in warning. "Unhand the child," he ordered.  
  
"Um, I don't think this is a very good idea, Sesshoumaru," Sango explained, her voice trembling as she lifted her eyes up from Rin and towards the very angry inu-youkai lord. The Tetsusaiga's force-field crackled and sparked as it counteracted Sesshoumaru's rising youki energy.  
  
Sango raised her hands off of Rin's shoulders and held them up in the air in a sign of surrender. "It's just that this isn't a good time," she explained, fighting to keep her voice from wavering. Your brother is... I mean, Inuyasha has..." Sango cast a nervous glance over her shoulder towards the dark recesses of the back of the cave.  
  
Sesshoumaru was silent for a long moment, during which Rin darted around Sango, stepped over the unconscious man in singed monk's robes, and went obediently to the fire, kneeling on the rock floor of the cave and holding her hands out in front of her, as close to the tiny flames as she dared. When Rin was situated and his youki had returned to their normal levels, Sesshoumaru turned his attention back to the demon exterminator. "The worthless half-breed is none of this Sesshoumaru's concern," he stated regally, ruining the effect with a sneeze.  
  
"God bless you," Shippou whispered from Sango's side where he still clung to the hem of her kimono. He squeaked and jumped behind Sango when the inu- youkai lord turned piercing amber eyes in his direction.  
  
Sesshoumaru gave a dignified sniff that just might have been a sniffle. "And why should He do that?" the inu-youkai lord finally asked, annoyed that such an infantile pup would dare speak to him without being spoken to first.  
  
"That's what some people in Kagome's time say when someone sneezes," Shippou explained, a tremor in his voice as he peered around Sango.  
  
Rin giggled. "God bless you, Sesshoumaru-sama!" she exclaimed.  
  
Sesshoumaru ignored her, narrowing his eyes at Shippou. "Kagome's... time?" he questioned, taking a step into the cave towards Sango. He passed through the Tetsusaiga's barrier with only the slightest sparking of energies, and Sango was forced to recognize just how tall the inu-youkai lord was when his long stride brought him uncomfortably close to her.  
  
"Ah, ha ha ha!" Sango's laugh was forced and false as she attempted a cover-up. She took a step backwards as she spoke, her retreat stalled when she bumped into the still-unconscious Miroku. "Not Kagome's *time*, that makes no sense. Ha ha! He meant that saying 'God bless you,' when someone sneezes is a time-honored tradition among Kagome's people."  
  
"Kagome's... people?" he asked, taking on an air of boredom. As Sango and Shippou watched in surprise, Sesshoumaru used his one arm to unwrap his incredibly long, incredibly soggy tail from around his shoulder. He swung his tail in front of him; then, starting with the tip and moving inches at a time, he meticulously squeezed the rainwater out of his meters of once- fluffy tail. His long white fingers removed every speck of debris put there by the rough winds, and combed through the long fur. Sango and Shippou were helpless but to stare in fascination at the almost delicate care the mighty demon royal gave to the appendage's grooming. Rin, obviously familiar with Sesshoumaru's habits, mimicked him, carefully squeezing water out of her black locks, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as a sign of her intense concentration. Sesshoumaru ignored all of them..  
  
*****  
  
Inuyasha had frozen in place at Sango's prolonged scream, Kagome's feet dangling inches above the floor from his grasp on the back of the oversized fire-rat haori she wore. In fact, if one ignored his ears, which flattened against his head, he would have appeared very much a statue to anyone who had good enough vision as to pierce the shadows and had bothered to look. Kagome, however, was quite another matter. She kicked her feet and wriggled desperately in his hold, equally anxious to escape Inuyasha as she was to go to her friend's aid.  
  
"Inuy-" she began, but Inuyasha unfroze himself long enough to clamp a clawed hand over her mouth.  
  
He stayed motionless, utterly silent, and on high alert as the human girl- child that smelled of Sesshoumaru entered his cave, as Sesshoumaru's youki crackled against the tetsusaiga's shield when Sango touched the child, and as Rin stepped over an unconscious Miroku -- when had the human male lost consciousness? -- to kneel by the fire. When Sesshoumaru sneezed and sniffled he relaxed considerably, although he kept his two-handed grip on Kagome steady. Taking slow, silent steps, he backed to the far-wall of the cave and sat in the darkest shadows, bringing Kagome down with him. He kept his eyes, ears, and nose trained on Sesshoumaru, but even when the inu- youkai entered the cave himself he stayed relaxed. Once Kagome realized that is was Sesshoumaru in the cave, she was more than happy to stay quiet and still, so he took the hand off of her mouth and adjusted his grip on her to mimic his earlier hold. Even when his clawed hand strayed a little higher up her leg than before, she kept her gaze fixed on Sesshoumaru, who seemed at the moment to be the more significant threat.  
  
*****  
  
"You will now tell this Sesshoumaru about this Kagome and her people," the inu-youkai lord demanded, seating himself beside Rin in front of the fire where he began to systematically dry his very long hair. Rin gave a little squeal of pleasure and cuddled up against his tail, which was once again fluffy but had not been wrapped around his shoulder. Sesshoumaru instead wrapped his surprisingly prehensile tail around the happy girl before utterly ignoring her.  
  
"Ah, ha ha..." Sango laughed nervously. She was still standing, and she nudged Miroku with her foot in hopes of waking him. "I don't know that much," she finally said. "What is it you want to know?"  
  
"Tell this Sesshoumaru where this Kagome's people reside," he ordered.  
  
"Well..." Sango started, obviously stalling, as she gave Miroku another nudge.  
  
Sesshoumaru raised a regal eyebrow. "Kagome's people reside in a well?" he finally asked, his tone almost mocking.  
  
Shippou gasped in horror -- Kagome had told him several times how important it was that the well remain a secret -- and Sango choked on her own intake of breath, making her cough. "No!" she finally managed to sputter. "I mean. we really don't know where she lives, do we, Shippou?" She gave the little kitsune a telling glance.  
  
Shippou shook his head vigorously, even adding a pout to make the lie more believable -- he was a kitsune, after all, a born trickster. "She has never even taken me home with her," he whined. "She takes Inuyasha all the time, but she never takes me..."  
  
Sango interrupted before the too-immature-to-really-be-a-good-trickster kitsune could say anything else foolish. "All that we know about her ti... I mean, her people, is from the stories she tells us."  
  
"Sesshoumaru-sama, will the funny lady tell Rin a story?" the little girl asked, her eyes wide with excitement at the idea of being told a story.  
  
"Um, my name is Sango..."  
  
"Yes," Sesshoumaru interrupted as if Sango had not started to speak. "The 'funny lady' will now relate to us one of this Kagome's stories about her... people." He paused long enough before the last word to make it clear that he was suspicious of their odd slip-ups. Sango swallowed hard before seating herself next to Miroku, who had steadfastly maintained his lack of consciousness despite her repeated prodding. The delinquent priest was such a better liar than she was!  
  
*****  
  
In the back of the cave, well outside the pitiful circle of heat and light the fire provided -- which was just fine with her, given the identity of their latest 'guest' -- Kagome sat upon Inuyasha's lap, trying to ignore his wandering hands as she prayed that Sesshoumaru wouldn't find out about the portal to her world. It was becoming obvious that Sango and Shippou were very poor liars, and she had left her yellow backpack in the fore- section of the cave, filled with marvels from her modern era...  
  
*****  
  
Author's Note: PLEASE READ! I was reading through Fanfiction.net the other day, and I found a story that claimed to be a copy and continuation of someone else's story that had never been updated. I read the story, and was stunned to find that the story was a copy and continuation of "Once Upon a Time." It is true that I took my own sweet time in updating, and it is also true that this is just a fanfiction, so I see nothing wrong with writing a fanfiction about someone else's story. In fact, it would be pretty hypocritical if I got upset about someone writing a fanfiction about my story, since all I am doing is writing fanfiction about a well-known story: Inuyasha. My only complaint is that this author didn't tell which story she/he was basing her/his story off of, not give me any credit in any way. So, if you are reading this (and I'm going to assume that you are, since you obviously are a fan of this story), please give credit to me and my story. Then people that find your story can also find my story, and they'll know exactly which parts were borrowed from me, and which parts were your own unique ideas. Thanks! 


	9. Rin Wants a Story Sesshoumaru sits down

Once Upon a Time Chapter 9 by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
*****  
  
Author's Notes: Yay! I didn't lose all of my readers because of my long delay in writing Chapter 8! Oh, and I know that Sesshoumaru's "puff" probably isn't a tail, but who can resist the appeal of the severe youkai lord having a long, fluffy appendage? Especially if it was prehensile through the same supernatural powers that allow him to fly and move so fast that he appears to be a glowing white ball of light (both of which I've seen in the anime)! Rin will be a lucky girl if Sesshoumaru decides to "keep" her after she grows up... I have trouble imagining Sesshoumaru siring a hanyou pup, but that is another argument. Also, remember that the story Sango tells is her interpretation of the original one Kagome would have told her. So, without further ado, here is the next chapter!  
  
*****  
  
The startling contrast between the little human girl cuddling up in an inu- youkai lord's fluffy tail and the great Sesshoumaru that the tail was attached to was almost enough to distract Sango from the threat in Sesshoumaru's eyes should she fail to amuse Rin with one of Kagome's story. Almost.  
  
"Once upon a time," she began. When Sesshoumaru rose an eyebrow -- again -- in recognition of another reference to time, Sango hastened to explain: "Kagome starts all of her stories that way. So, once upon a time, or so Kagome says, there was a girl of some wealth that owned a crimson cloak with a hood. It had been given to her by her mother to wear when she went horse riding, which is apparently a favored recreation of the very wealthy girls among Kagome's people. The girl loved this cloak so much that she wore it all the time -- so often, in fact, that people referred to her as Little Red Riding Hood."  
  
Rin broke out in giggles at the ridiculous name, and Sango relaxed marginally, giving the girl a hesitant smile of her own, before continuing. "Her mother had come from another village to join with her father, and her mother's mother, of course, still resided in this other village. Little Red Riding Hood's mother received news that her own mother had taken ill, and she had gathered food and medicinal herbs in a woven basket to take to her, but then her husband forbid her to leave his side and take the journey. Little Red Riding Hood's mother sent her crimson-garbed daughter in her stead, and the girl went off alone."  
  
Sesshoumaru gave a disbelieving snort. When Sango raised frightened eyes to him, he commented, "If her father was so wealthy, he should have sent her with a company of armed soldiers and female companions."  
  
Sango nodded. "I said the same thing when Kagome related this story to me, wondering perhaps if this girl was a miko or an exterminator. Kagome said that Little Red Riding Hood was just a regular girl, and that perhaps she left without her father's permission or knowledge, since she went alone." While Sesshoumaru pondered the depth of human stupidity, for a father to not realize that one of his pups was missing, Kagome continued. "Her mother's mother's village was small and isolated, located in the middle of a deep wood, and Little Red Riding Hood was careful not to stray from the path. Nonetheless, when she was in the woods, too far for either her father's village or her mother's mother's village to hear her cries of distress, she came across a wolf..."  
  
Rin's sudden scream of fright echoed off the cave walls. Sango jumped, Shippou gave his own cry of surprise, and, in the depths of the cave, Inuyasha's ears flattened against his head as Kagome stiffened in his lap. Miroku gave a grunt of pain and slowly started to regain consciousness. Sesshoumaru's face remained without expression as Rin tried to bury herself in his meters of fluffy tail. "Rin does not like wolves," he stated.  
  
Sango gulped, her heart still racing from Rin's startling cry. "The wolf did not attack Little Red Riding Hood on the forest path," she quickly explained to Rin, although her eyes remained on Sesshoumaru. "He spoke with her instead."  
  
Rin's face popped up from under thick strands of white fur. "A youkai wolf?" she asked.  
  
"How else could it talk to her?" Shippou asked, an air of superiority in his voice, for he did not share Rin's fear of wolves, and for once he was not the most cowardly.  
  
Rin gave another squeal, apparently more afraid of youkai wolf than she was of the natural animal, and ducked back under Sesshoumaru's tail. Shippou smirked in amusement. Sango frowned at him. "Shippou, you know for a fact that there are no youkai where Kagome lives. Why are you trying to frighten..." She was cut off when Sesshoumaru rose to his feet in a blur of white and a rustling of expensive silks. She looked up just in time to see a darkly striped, long-clawed hand grip her around the throat and lift her off her feet. There was a muffled squeak of surprise from Rin and Sesshoumaru's tail suddenly vanished from around her.  
  
"You will tell this Sesshoumaru how it is possible that there are no youkai in this place," he growled, flexing his hand just a bit in case lifting her off her feet by her throat was not threat enough. Then he heard a growl and saw a streak of red, and Sesshoumaru found his grip removed from the youkai exterminator's throat and his person shoved towards the cave entrance and tackled to the ground; his snarling, red-eyed little half-brother was above him, one clawed-hand pinning his only arm to the ground, the other clawed hand raised to shred him to pieces.  
  
*****  
  
Kagome found herself tossed on the cold stone floor of the cave as Inuyasha rushed forward to protect his pack-member from a blatant outside threat. Afraid of the blood-lust that seemed to inevitably follow any shedding of blood by youkai Inuyasha, she jumped to her feet and ran forward at her much slower human-running-on-rough-rock-in-bare-feet pace. "Inuyasha!" she yelled. "Sit!"  
  
*****  
  
Sesshoumaru was having a bad day. Oh, the day had started well enough, resting lazily under a tree and watching the sun rise as Rin snoozed on, curled up at his side with his tail wrapped around her for warmth. It did not matter where the child fell asleep, whether on the back of the two- headed lizard youkai she had named Ah-Un or on a soft carpet of grass, she never failed to wake during the night and creep to his side. Of course, no amount of stealth on the child's part would allow her to surprise Sesshoumaru, but she would pretend he wasn't watching her as she approached him, her bare feet crunching on dried leaves, the sounds of her breathing and heartbeat loud in his ears.  
  
The sound of her own stomach growling had woken the girl, but when Sesshoumaru suggested she go find herself something to eat, she had looked amazed that he had realized she might be hungry. Her foolishness -- her innocence -- had almost brought a smile of amusement to his lips. Almost. It was hard to be amused by innocence when you had lived as long as he had, had seen as much as he had seen, had done the things that he had done...  
  
When Rin had eaten a generous share of some wild berries and washed her blue-tinged hands and face in the chilly water of a creek, they set out. They encountered the smell of non-Rin humans uncomfortably close to Sesshoumaru's borders, and he scratched deep gouges into the trees on his borders to frighten the villagers from extending their boundaries into his. Jaken complained about their stench until he turned away from Sesshoumaru, telling Rin that she smelled just as bad as any human. Sesshoumaru threw a rock at Jaken's head, and for the next hour he had to listen to Jaken mumbling about who could have thrown that rock. Sesshoumaru came across a nest of young snake youkai shortly after that, foolish things that challenged Sesshoumaru's leadership, and as the young snakes have the most poison, and their number was great, they were bothersome to disperse. One bee-lined towards Rin, and as the girl screamed he cleaved it lengthwise in two with his whip. Most of the others he melted slowly with his poisoned claws, the snakes' writhing bodies spurting foul fluids about as they shrieked pitifully. Frightening humans, throwing a rock at Jaken, and gruesomely destroying enemies -- all in all, it had been a wonderful start to a day.  
  
The troubles began when he continued his survey of the border of his lands, with Jaken, Rin, and Ah-Un following behind. Jaken had resumed complaining about how badly humans smelled. Rin was picking every pretty flower she saw, studiously ignoring Jaken. Ah-Un was typically the least of his concerns, not that he would let Jaken or even Rin concern him overmuch, but one of Ah-Un's head's suddenly sneezed, sending out streams of the fiery energy that was the lizard-youkai's defense. If Sesshoumaru hadn't been alerted fractions of a second earlier -- by Ah-Un's rapid whiff of breath before the sneeze -- and used the Tensaiga to shield them all, Rin would have been reduced to ash and memory. Then Ah-Un's other head had sneezed, emitting another potentially-deadly assault. When the two heads sneezed in unison and the effort of using the Tensaiga as a shield actually caused Sesshoumaru to blink involuntarily, he sent the mount away with Jaken, who had sneezed a few times himself and was loudly blaming Rin for giving him some dirty human disease.  
  
Surprisingly, Jaken had almost been right. Sesshoumaru's resistance to such things was unmistakably much higher than that of a speechless two-headed lizard youkai and whatever Jaken was, so when he gave a sneeze of his own, he endeavored to find the source of the problem. It was not exactly Rin, as Jaken had predicted, but a bunch of flowers she gripped in her tiny fist, flowers that she had been carrying since before Ah-Un's first sneeze. Sesshoumaru actually took the effort to scowl at the plant, whose stems were slender and a color similar to that of moss, whose leaves were veined in purple, whose tiny flowers were pink in petal and golden-yellow in the centers, and whose roots, which Rin had pulled from the ground, still clung to clumps of dirt. He made Rin bury the flowers and wash herself and her clothing in a stream to rid herself of the pollen. Rin hadn't yet air- dried, and Sesshoumaru was still sneezing at irregular intervals -- the loss of control was unpleasant -- when the rain started.  
  
The flower pollen had a more serious effect on Sesshoumaru than the annoying sneezes. It had affected his typically impeccable health, making the rain and wind feel unpleasantly cold. It had also made him a little tired, to the point that he began searching for shelter before the moon's rising, assuming the moon came out at all tonight, given the heavy clouds that blanketed the sky in darkness before its time. The most disastrous effect of the flower pollen, though, was its other effect on Sesshoumaru's nasal passages. His sense of smell was so badly hindered that he would not have known that Inuyasha's traveling companions were in the cave he had chosen for shelter had he not heard them speaking.  
  
He had ignored their conversations, which might have been a mistake, as he had had no idea that his half-brother was even in the cave, let alone that he had transformed yet again, until he found himself pinned under him quite effectively. If that embarrassment hadn't been enough, he was forced to recognize the arrival of Inuyasha's human-miko-bitch -- who was apparently from some realm that was without youkai, might have existed outside of time, and had something to do with a well, if the reactions of the youkai exterminator and kitsune kit to his mockery of them was any indication -- when she spoke a degrading word of power and brought the worthless half- breed crashing down upon him with more force and weight than the hanyou should have possessed, effectively knocking the breath out of them both.  
  
*****  
  
Author's Notes: I NEED SOME HELP!! Actually, all I need is for people to tell me if they want me to finish this story up in the next chapter or so, or leave the next chapter open-ended so that a little adventure can follow (Sesshumaru-rich, but maintaining the focus on Kagome/Inuyasha sexual tension). Let me know in your reviews, please. Take into consideration that I tend to write very slowly... but I've already written a 17 page chapter 10 that expands the story, so don't be mad that this chapter is so short. (And, since I'm sure someone will comment on it, Sesshoumaru isn't calling Kagome a bitch because he doesn't like her, but is using the term neutrally to mean female, as I suspect a dog-demon would). 


	10. Not a chapter Aisuru has exciting news!

Sorry, I can't figure out how to delete this second chapter, only how to replace it with a different second chapter. 


	11. Little Red Riding Hood and Sexual Predat...

Once Upon a Time: Little Red Riding Hood and Sexual Predators Chapter 10 by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com  
  
*****  
  
Inuyasha opened confused amber eyes. He was lying face down on something that felt like expensive silk on carved mahogany, smooth and hard and strong with just a bit of give, but the smell... He tried to leap to his feet as his addled brain recognized the scent of Sesshoumaru, but his body refused to respond. The most he could manage was to push up a little on his arms, just enough to raise his face out of the heavy folds of silk cloth. He did so, and found that he had been face-to-chest with Sesshoumaru. He looked up into eyes that were a mirror image of his own, identical in appearance but almost void of expression.  
  
"Get off," his older half-brother said, as if he had been lying there, pinning his brother on the ground, for the fun of it.  
  
"Can't. Not yet," Inuyasha growled, his body still fighting the subduing while his mind tried to make sense of the situation. He broke eye contact for the briefest moment to note that his left hand, which he couldn't have raised even if he had wanted to, was pinning his brother's only arm to a stone floor. His right hand, which still had the claws extended for a strike, had landed just to the side of Sesshoumaru's throat. Had Kagome subdued him during a fight? His bitch should know better than that!  
  
Inuyasha brought his eyes back to Sesshoumaru's face, unwilling to turn his attention away from his foe, even if it was clear that neither of them could move for the moment. His brother's scent was the strongest due to his proximity, and the smoke from the fire was pervasive, but the scents of Kagome, Shippou, Sango, and Miroku were all present, along with some unidentified female human child that smelled strongly of Sesshoumaru. He smelled no blood, although Miroku smelled unconscious -- nothing unusual there -- and Sango and Shippou smelled terrified. Kagome smelled good, better than usual, in fact. He blinked hard a few times, trying to clear the last remains of a red haze from his vision. Wait... red haze? He flicked his gaze up, where the Tetsusaiga was still embedded in the solid rock ceiling at the entrance of the cave, forming the shield that kept the still-violent storm outside. Inuyasha barked out an expletive so vile that to this day it has no translation outside of the canine youkai tongue. Shippou gasped from somewhere deeper in the cave. Sesshoumaru sneered.  
  
"Well spoken, pup," he said, his smooth and elegant voice thick with sarcasm. "As you might have guessed, you have once again lost control of your youkai blood. This Sesshoumaru does not comprehend why you intend to wish away your human blood with some cursed stone when you can't even master the small portion of your blood that comes from our illustrious father. You will always be a worthless hanyou." His eyes flickered over to Kagome, who was kneeling over the coughing youkai exterminator, the infantile kitsune wringing his hands at her side. "A worthless hanyou that is subordinate to his own bitch," Sesshoumaru taunted, his voice too soft for the humans to hear, had they been paying attention.  
  
Inuyasha growled during Sesshoumaru's taunting, but his heart wasn't really in it, as he was more concerned with trying to piece together what had transpired since his last recollection -- the argument with Kouga. The argument with Kouga was really nothing special, just the wimpy wolf's absurd claim that Kagome belonged to him. As Kagome would say, 'As if!' The only thing different this time was that this time, the Tetsusaiga wasn't at his side. But still, why would he transform? Sure, the wolf was annoying, but he wasn't a threat like the other foes that had caused him to transform. Unless...  
  
Inuyasha was strictly steering his thoughts away from the possibility that Kouga was a threat *because* the wimpy wolf was laying claim to Kagome, when Sesshoumaru turned his attention to Kagome. Inuyasha's growl became more than the expected background accompaniment to Sesshoumaru's rant. 'I'm not submissive to my bitch!' he thought, then quickly added, 'Kagome isn't my bitch!' At about the same moment, Inuyasha was released from the subduing spell. He leapt up, intending to pull the Tetsusaiga from the cave ceiling, but Sesshoumaru guessed his intent, tucking his legs up under the leaping hanyou and kicking him -- hard -- in the stomach, twisting during the kick so that Inuyasha was thrown -- again, hard -- towards the far wall. Sesshoumaru concluded the maneuver by using the momentum of his legs to leap to his feet, allowing himself a smirk as Inuyasha struck the wall, hitting it with his back and left side.  
  
When Inuyasha was able, he freed himself from the wall, crushed stone falling to the cave floor and leaving a shallow, roughly Inuyasha-shaped indentation. Inuyasha gave himself a quick, dog-like shake, letting the rock dust fall from the back and left side of his kimono and hakama and clearing the ringing from his head. He immediately regretted the move, as the impact had apparently crushed something important in his left shoulder and broken several ribs on his left side. He let out a disgusted snarl as he noticed his left arm hanging rather uselessly at his side -- such an collision would not have damaged him if he had been a full-blooded inu- youkai like his older brother. Then he noticed Sesshoumaru's smirk and years of fighting took over as he forgot his pain. "You're not going to get the Tetsusaiga!" he growled.  
  
Sesshoumaru's face returned to its expressionless mask. "I am not here for our father's sword," he said smoothly.  
  
"Leave Inuyasha alone!" Kagome yelled from the sidelines. Both brothers turned towards her, more because of the rising tingles of miko power then because of her shout. She looked as formidable and desirable as a woman- child human possibly could, her ebony locks and the edges of the red haori she wore flaring out around her as she drew power into herself, exposing more of her legs. The long sleeves had been pushed awkwardly up her arms, and an arrow was notched in her bow, the tip pointed at Sesshoumaru.  
  
Sesshoumaru kept his cool gaze fixed on Kagome as he spoke to his brother, but the tone forced Inuyasha's eyes back to his brother's face. "This Sesshoumaru could tear your bitch to pieces before her arrow hits its mark," he cautioned, and was pleased when the miko's hand began to tremble just the slightest bit.  
  
"Stay out of this, bitch," Inuyasha warned, his gaze flickering away from Sesshoumaru for only the briefest moment. He made his expression as unpleasant as possible, hoping she would take Sesshoumaru's threat seriously. He wasn't sure he was in good enough shape to protect her if Sesshoumaru decided to attack her, and Sesshoumaru had yet to turn his attention back to him.  
  
Instead, Kagome dropped her arms in exasperation, the arrow pointing to the ground and the long sleeves flopping down over her fingertips as Inuyasha focused his attention back on his brother. "Hey!" she yelled, turning to face Inuyasha, "How many times do I have to tell you not to call me 'bitch'? My name is Kagome -- Ka-Go-" Her rant was cut off suddenly as Sesshoumaru appeared behind her, twisting his fingers in her hair just above her neck. The bow and arrow clattered to the ground and she raised her hands to her head, instinctively trying to release her locks from Sesshoumaru's iron grip, but her hands were trapped in the ample sleeves. Behind her, Sango and Shippou crept around the fire to put more distance between them and the inu-youkai lord, pulling the semi-conscious monk along by his robes.  
  
"He calls you bitch because you are his bitch," Sesshoumaru said in his smooth voice, ignoring her struggling as if it were the fluttering of a moth's wings. "If you object to being a bitch, why are you mated to an inu- hanyou?" He used his grip on her hair to tilt her head, also ignoring her surprised yelp as he effortlessly repositioned her, using a sharp-clawed thumb to brush away remaining locks of hair that impeded his view of the side of her throat. "Do quit your growling, pup, or you may annoy this Sesshoumaru into snapping your mate's very human neck."  
  
Miroku, finally conscious enough to take note of the events going on around him, addressed Inuyasha. "Are you going to molest Kagome again?" is what he asked.  
  
"Huh? What?" Inuyasha asked, his eyes wide as he looked towards the monk, the growling ceased in his surprise.  
  
Sango elbowed Miroku, and he grunted, but he continued his line of questioning. "Your eyes started turning red again, so I was wondering if you and Kagome were going to go at it again in the back of the cave." Miroku's moan of pain -- courtesy of Sango -- was hidden under Inuyasha's stunned denials.  
  
"What are you... I mean, how can you..." he sputtered.  
  
"It's true!" Shippou called out from where he was hiding behind Sango. "You didn't like that she smelled like Miroku and Kouga, so you took her out of the cave, ripped all of her clothes off, washed her in the rain, and started slurping all over her neck. You dressed her in your haori, dried her hair, and then carried her off into the back of the cave."  
  
Inuyasha blushed more furiously red with each of Shippou's words. Now that he thought about it, he had noticed that Kagome smelled better than usual, probably because removing her clothes and washing her in the rain had gotten rid of the scents of her time, her soaps, and all the other males whose scents clung to her. To think, he had done all of that to Kagome... He shifted his gaze back to Kagome, noticing that she was in fact wearing his haori, and despite being in Sesshoumaru's grasp she was also blushing.  
  
It came as a great surprise to everybody when Sesshoumaru gave out a sudden bark of laughter. "This Sesshoumaru's brother really is a pup!" he exclaimed. Still using his one-handed grip on Kagome's hair to move her about, he turned her so that the right side of her throat faced the hanyou, ignoring her squeal of protest at being manipulated like a doll. "You call this a mark, Inuyasha? You barely scratched the bitch's skin. Are your fangs as underdeveloped as your mind, pup? Do you need this Sesshoumaru to mark her on your behalf?" With these words, he curled up his lips, displaying his lethal fangs, and leaned over the girl's exposed neck.  
  
*****  
  
Aisuru: Sorry this chapter was so short. And I ended it at a cliff- hanger. And it didn't even have any story-telling in it!  
  
Shippou:   
  
Aisuru: Huh? What are you doing here? You are supposed to be hiding like a coward behind Sango.  
  
Shippou: I'm not a coward! I'm just *sniff* too weak *sniff* to take on Sesshoumaru! Besides, you can't have a chapter without story-telling!  
  
Aisuru: Don't you try to change the subject! You aren't even brave enough to try to take on Sesshoumaru. I thought Kagome was like a mother to you. Her very life is in danger, and all you can do is hide!  
  
Shippou: *sniff* Poor Kagome! *sob* Why do I have to be so weak!  
  
Mushrooms: Waaaaaahhhh!  
  
Sesshoumaru: What is that cursed sound?  
  
Kagome: I'm free. I'm free! Inuyasha, I'm free!  
  
Inuyasha: Quit yelling, bitch!  
  
Kagome: Quit calling me a bitch!  
  
Mushrooms: Waaaaaahhhh!  
  
Sesshoumaru: Too... much... noise...   
  
Inuyasha: But you are a bitch.  
  
Kagome: Shippou, my hero!   
  
Inuyasha: Hey! Don't hug him like that! You're not his bitch! You're mine!  
  
Miroku: The confession.  
  
Inuyasha: Ah... What I mean is...  
  
Aisuru: See? I told everyone that this was still an Inuyasha/Kagome fic!  
  
Kagome: I never noticed before, but kitsune youkai are so much cuter than inu youkai.  
  
Inuyasha: Hey! Where do you think you're going?  
  
Kagome: Obviously, your shard detector is leaving you for a better man!   
  
Shippou: You do realize I see you as a mother-figure, right?   
  
Inuyasha: Aisuru...   
  
Aisuru: Um... Oops? What if I just continue the story, right now, from where it was...  
  
*****  
  
It came as a great surprise to everybody when Sesshoumaru gave out a sudden bark of laughter. "This Sesshoumaru's brother really is a pup!" he exclaimed. Still using his one-handed grip on Kagome's hair to move her about, he turned her so that the right side of her throat faced the hanyou, ignoring her squeal of protest at being manipulated like a doll. "You call this a mark, Inuyasha? You barely scratched the bitch's skin. Are your fangs as underdeveloped as your mind, pup? Do you need this Sesshoumaru to mark her on your behalf?" With these words, he curled up his lips, displaying his lethal fangs, and leaned over the girl's exposed neck.  
  
*****  
  
Shippou: You already wrote that part!  
  
Aisuru: Stop interrupting, or I'll give you back to Kagome.  
  
Shippou:   
  
Inuyasha:   
  
Aisuru: Or maybe not...  
  
Sango: Oh, good grief! Will you please stop these self-insertions and get on with the story? Unless, of course, you'd rather get back to working on your thesis.  
  
Aisuru: ...  
  
Sango: That's better.  
  
*****  
  
"What? No!" Inuyasha shouted, but he found himself frozen in place by indecision. Because he had grown up pretty much on his own, he wasn't sure how, technically, a marking was done, so a part of him was curious to watch one take place. Besides, Sesshoumaru had would be marking Kagome for him, and Kagome did smell so wonderful in his haori, even if she would now smell like Sesshoumaru, too, since he was touching her hair.  
  
Kagome had no such indecision as she felt Sesshoumaru's breath centimeters from the right side of her throat. She wished yet again that she had conscious control of her miko powers and could summon them at will. Her bow and arrow were on the ground by her feet, and she couldn't sense any miko power in herself at the moment. She was about to get her throat ripped out, and her powers had vanished. The best she could do was squeeze her eyes shut and dig her fingernails into the hand that held her hair captive.  
  
"Oooh, the little bitch may be a human, but she has claws," Sesshoumaru taunted in a low voice.  
  
Sango and Miroku were prepared to rush to Kagome's aid, since Inuyasha was acting strangely, his head tilted a little to the side as he watched Sesshoumaru as if he were an inu-youkai pup in the middle of a lesson on how to rip out someone's throat with your fangs, but they stopped when the little girl that had entered the cave with Sesshoumaru stepped in the way.  
  
"Sesshoumaru-sama," Rin asked, pulling on the empty sleeve that used to house his left arm. Sesshoumaru moved away from the human miko's throat so he could glance down at the child.  
  
Rin gave a little nervous smile. "Sesshoumaru-sama, are you going to kill the pretty miko-girl?"  
  
"Does Rin want this Sesshoumaru to kill the 'pretty miko-girl'?" he asked the child. Rin shook her head no.  
  
"Hey! You said you were going to mark her, not kill her!" Inuyasha yelled, coming towards them, his right arm holding his useless left arm tight against his side.  
  
"Calm yourself, pup," Sesshoumaru said, sounding as if he would have rolled his eyes if such an action wouldn't have been so undignified. "This Sesshoumaru has no intention of killing your bitch."  
  
"But you just said..." Inuyasha countered.  
  
Sesshoumaru glared at him, and Inuyasha actually closed his mouth. He looked at Rin again, ignoring Kagome, who was yelling something about not being anybody's bitch. "Rin, I am not going to kill the 'pretty miko-girl' at this time. I was merely going to claim her as property of my father's illustrious bloodline." Now Kagome was yelling something about not being anybody's property and calling him a shou-ve-ni-su-ti-ku, whatever that was. It did not sound complementary, so he tightened his grip on her hair until she squealed.  
  
Rin's eyes brightened. "Like you did to me?" she asked, pushing her kimono neckline down on the right side and brushing her hair aside to reveal a mark. Sesshoumaru gave a nod and leaned towards Rin, giving the mark a lick. Rin giggled.  
  
"What the hell?" Inuyasha yelled. "Sesshoumaru, are you some kind of pedophile?"  
  
"Get him away from me!" Kagome cried out, despite the hand that still held tight to her hair.  
  
"Ewww, you like pups?" Shippou asked, making a gagging sound. Then, remembering that he was a child, he hid behind Sango again.  
  
"Even I agree that she is too young," Miroku added. Sango looked relieved to hear Miroku say that.  
  
Rin blinked large, innocent eyes. "Sesshoumaru-sama, what is 'pedophile'?"  
  
*****  
  
Aisuru: Alright, people. And youkai. Let's keep this PG13.  
  
Rin: Rin is not yet 13.  
  
Aisuru: Ahem. Yeah. My point exactly.  
  
Sango: Aisuru?  
  
Aisuru: Yeah, Sango?  
  
Sango: Get back to the story!  
  
Aisuru: ...  
  
*****  
  
Sesshoumaru glared at Inuyasha. "You are truly ignorant of your inu-youkai heritage, pup," he growled.  
  
"Eww! He called me pup!" Inuyasha cringed.  
  
Sesshoumaru sighed in exasperation. "This Sesshoumaru does not lust after pups."  
  
"What is 'lust'?" Rin asked. Everyone ignored her, except for Shippou, who was quickly muzzled by Sango's hand.  
  
Sesshoumaru continued, "Rin's mark is an outward sign that she is under the protection of our family, Inuyasha. For this Sesshoumaru to lick his mark on Rin is reassuring to her. It is not sexual."  
  
Shippou wriggled out of Sango's grasp. "So when Inuyasha was licking all over Kagome when he went all red-eyed, he was just reassuring her?" he asked.  
  
"No," Miroku answered, "That was sexual."  
  
"Indeed," agreed Sesshoumaru.  
  
Inuyasha blushed and sputtered.  
  
"What is 'sexual'?" Rin asked.  
  
Inuyasha cleared his throat, looking embarrassed. "What is it, pup?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
Inuyasha started to cross his arms across his chest, preparing to get all defensive to hide the fact that he was uncomfortable, but his left arm refused to move. "Well, what's the difference?"  
  
Miroku and Sango couldn't help but laugh. Kagome, if she could have moved her head, would have looked at him in confusion. "Feh!" Inuyasha declared, deciding not to ask anymore questions.  
  
"It is not a foolish question, stupid humans," Sesshoumaru rebuked. Sesshoumaru signaled his hanyou half-brother forward with a tilt of his head. "Smell the mark on Rin," he advised.  
  
Very awkwardly, Inuyasha approached the child and sniffed at her neck. She stood perfectly still, as if being sniffed by a youkai -- or hanyou -- was of no consequence. "She smells like your spit," Inuyasha declared.  
  
Sesshoumaru nodded. "Now smell your bitch's throat," he ordered. Inuyasha stepped to the front of Kagome, trying not to notice how wonderful she looked in his haori, and how much better she smelled, if he ignored Sesshoumaru's touching her hair.  
  
"Inuyasha!" Kagome chided when she saw him lean towards her throat. "Why aren't you rescuing me? Inuyasha?"  
  
Inuyasha ignored her words, instead leaning towards her throat and taking a sniff. Then he took another, and another, and another. Soon, his whole body was pressed against her front, and he unconsciously was trying to push Sesshoumaru away from her with his working right arm so he could have her all to himself. Sesshoumaru countered by kicking Inuyasha -- gently, this time -- in his broken ribs.  
  
"Aww, shit!" Inuyasha exclaimed, holding tightly to his ribs. "What the f*ck did you do that for?"  
  
"Did you notice the difference in scents?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
"Feh! Of course I did. My bitch doesn't smell like your spit."  
  
"Don't call me a bitch," Kagome muttered, feeling kind of funny from the way Inuyasha had been acting towards her, and the possession he was adding to the term 'bitch.'  
  
Sesshoumaru ignored Kagome and nodded to Inuyasha. "Instead, she smelled like..." he prompted.  
  
Inuyasha started to answer, then blushed again.  
  
Miroku whispered loudly to Sango, "It must have been sexual." Sango nodded.  
  
"What is 'sexual'?" Rin asked again.  
  
"Ask these questions to Jaken," Sesshoumaru advised, only managing to keep a straight face because of centuries of training and practice. Inuyasha, with less control, let out a bark of laughter. When Inuyasha had controlled himself, Sesshoumaru continued his lesson. "So now do you understand the difference between the mark I would give your bitch and the mark you would give her?"  
  
Inuyasha nodded, trying not to blush at the thought of marking his Kagome in the more-than-protective way. To distract himself, he asked, "Where is the ugly toad anyway?"  
  
Rin laughed to hear Jaken referred to as an ugly toad. "He had to go away with Ah-Un," she declared. "Sesshoumaru-sama, when will Ah-Un come back?"  
  
"When he stops sneezing fire," he answered with a no expression.  
  
Rin giggled. "Jaken sneezed, too. So did you, Sesshoumaru-sama, and we all said, 'God bless you, Sesshoumaru-sama!'"  
  
Inuyasha let out another bark of laughter. "You, the great Sesshoumaru, sneezed?" he asked, his voice sarcastic.  
  
Sesshoumaru glared at Inuyasha for being disrespectful.  
  
"These made him sneeze!" Rin declared, reaching into her kimono and pulling out a bunch of flowers. The flowers were very pretty, with slender moss- green stems, purple-veined leaves, and tiny flowers with pink petals and golden-yellow centers. A few small clumps of dirt clung to the roots, which had been pulled from the ground. A little misting of yellow pollen came from the flowers. Sesshoumaru released Kagome's hair before giving a violent sneeze.  
  
Kagome ran as fast as she could with bare feet, hiding behind Sango and Miroku. Quite frankly, she didn't trust Inuyasha to protect her right now. Shippou jumped into her arms, fussing over her and rubbing out the kinks in her neck with his tiny clawed hands.  
  
Rin laughed. "God bless you, Sesshoumaru-sama!" she exclaimed.  
  
Sesshoumaru growled, picking up Rin by the back of her kimono and taking her outside of the cave.  
  
*****  
  
Aisuru: Now the chapter is long. Is everyone happy?  
  
Shippou: Nope. I want some story-telling.  
  
Aisuru: ...  
  
*****  
  
Inuyasha had started laughing at Sesshoumaru's sneeze, and hadn't yet stopped. He was clutching painfully at his broken ribs, but still he kept laughing. "Did you..." he wheezed, "Did you see his face?" he asked before another fit of laughter took him over.  
  
Shippou gave a little laugh from Kagome's shoulder. "It was sort of funny," he replied, before he, too, sneezed. Then he sneezed again, the force of it knocking him from Kagome's shoulder. Kagome yelped as he took a few of her hairs with him, pulling them out at the root. Inuyasha laughed even harder.  
  
Sango stepped forward, inspecting a single flower that had fallen to the cave floor during Sesshoumaru's hasty exit from the cave. She sniffed it carefully, and when it failed to affect her, she smiled. "This could be very useful," she commented with a grin. "I wonder if this would make Naraku sneeze."  
  
"Doubt it," Inuyasha gasped, getting his laughter under control. "He's a hanyou of sorts, isn't he? And it doesn't seem to be affecting me at all." He groaned a little at his aching ribs.  
  
"No affect, huh?" Kagome asked, standing behind Miroku since Sango had abandoned her for the youkai sneezing flower.  
  
There was another sneeze, and an annoyed Kirara crawled out from under Kagome's backpack. "There you are, Kirara!" Sango cried out, scooping up the cat and giving her a hug. The cat sneezed again, more violently, and jumped from Sango's arms. "Oops," she said, holding up the flower she still held and tossing it outside the cave. "If it affects Kirara like this, it won't be of much use to us."  
  
"I can't smell!" Shippou cried, jumping onto Inuyasha's left shoulder. Inuyasha barked out another untranslatable expletive, and moved Shippou to his right shoulder, which was not so thoroughly crushed. Then Inuyasha turned his head to the side and sniffed.  
  
"No, you still smell," Inuyasha stated.  
  
Shippou pouted. "You know what I mean!" he whined, sneezing again. Kirara mewed in agreement, sniffing at random items in the cave and detecting nothing.  
  
Kagome approached Inuyasha cautiously, taking Shippou off of his shoulder and onto the ground. "Inuyasha," she said, hesitantly. He directed his golden gaze in her direction, and what she could see of his eyes in the firelight was unreadable. "Um, if you are done acting all strange, I probably should take a look at your back and left side." Inuyasha just kept looking at her, and she thought he might have taken a quick sniff of the air. "You know, from when Sesshoumaru kicked you into a wall?" she reminded him.  
  
Miroku called to Inuyasha, "Maybe she just wants you to take off your kimono."  
  
"Miroku!" Kagome scolded.  
  
Inuyasha reached for Kagome's hair with his working right hand and had her head tilted to the side before she could even gasp in surprise. He leaned forward, sniffed at her neck, and gave her an affectionate little lick. "No, she doesn't," he answered. "She's really worried about me." He turned his attention back to Kagome. "I'm a hanyou. I'll heal."  
  
Kagome reached up to pull Inuyasha's hand out of her hair, and he growled at her, so she scowled and tapped him in the left shoulder with her fist. "Ow! You stupid bitch!" Inuyasha exclaimed, releasing her hair to grasp at his shoulder. "Why'd you try to hurt me?"  
  
"I didn't hurt you," she grumbled. "How could I, a lowly human, hurt you, the omnipotent hanyou?" She turned away from him in annoyance. Inuyasha stepped towards her back, grasped her hair again, and gave her neck another lick. "What are you doing?" Kagome exclaimed, trying to turn around and failing.  
  
"What's 'omnipotent'?" Shippou whispered to Miroku, before the pup sneezed yet again.  
  
"It means all-powerful," Miroku whispered back.  
  
"Inuyasha? All-powerful?" Shippou asked, his voice just a little louder.  
  
"I believe Kagome-sama was being sarcastic," Miroku replied, letting his volume match Shippou's volume.  
  
"You were?" Inuyasha asked with a little whine, giving Kagome another lick.  
  
"I was what?" Kagome asked, not having heard the conversation between Miroku and Shippou. "Inuyasha, you are acting strange again. Could you please let me go?"  
  
"No," Inuyasha replied.  
  
"No?" Kagome asked incredulously. "Why the hell not?"  
  
Inuyasha nipped at her neck. "Watch your language, bitch," he scolded softly. "If I let you go, you might try to hurt me again."  
  
Kagome rolled her eyes. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I wanted you to let go of my hair, and besides, I was proving a point. If your shoulder didn't need tending, then that little tap I gave you wouldn't have hurt, now would it?"  
  
"Why do you want me to let go of your hair?" he asked.  
  
"Because it sort of hurts, being pulled along by your hair." She reached behind her, grabbed one of his forelocks, and gave it a tug.  
  
"Didn't hurt," Inuyasha said with a smug smile that Kagome couldn't see but that she could definitely hear.  
  
"Yeah, well, I'm just a 'weak human,' aren't I?" she said, her voice angry.  
  
Inuyasha leaned forward, sniffed at her scalp, and immediately released her hair. "Sorry," he said, instead using his hand to gently massage her abused scalp. She turned around to face him, and Inuyasha continued massaging her scalp with his right hand, so Kagome was in the curve of his arm. He gave a smile that Kagome couldn't see, as his back was to the fire.  
  
"Now what are you doing?" she asked.  
  
"Sesshoumaru and I hurt you," he whined, drooping his ears in an adorable display that Kagome only noticed because his silhouette changed when he did it. She reached up and rubbed his ears upright again, feeling a purring rumble from Inuyasha's chest. She dropped her hands, clasping them in front of her to put keep some distance between her and Inuyasha.  
  
"You're hurt more," she muttered.  
  
Inuyasha moved his hand between them and untied his kimono one-handed. He slipped his right arm out of the sleeve, and used his right hand to push the sleeve off his left arm, giving a pained grunt. The kimono, still tucked into his hakama, hung down over his hips. "My shoulder hurts," he admitted.  
  
With a smile, Kagome grabbed his right hand and pulled him towards the fire so she could see. Once she had him seated -- she did it without saying the word -- she went to her bag and pulled out her first-aid kit. When she had seated herself next to him, she frowned. His back and left side was covered in deep bruises, and his left shoulder just looked wrong. She swallowed roughly, pulled out two aspirin and a bottle of water, and told him to take the pills. He did, keeping his eyes on her face and his nose attuned to her scent. She gently washed out some scrapes with the strong smelling, undrinkable alcohol, and smeared some of the anti-infection cream on them. Then she sat back on her heels and looked at him apologetically. "Um, I don't know what to do for your shoulder. Sorry. But the aspirin should help some with the pain. I hope."  
  
To Kagome's surprise, Inuyasha gave a huge, fang-displaying yawn. She resisted the temptation to stick her finger in his mouth, like she sometimes did with Buyo, knowing that Inuyasha's fangs were infinitely sharper and that he could bite her finger off without meaning to. "Sleepy, Inuyasha?" she teased.  
  
Instead of disagreeing, Inuyasha crawled to her left side so he could lay on his undamaged right side and put his head in her lap. He yawned again, then answered her, "Need to sleep to heal. Don't let Shippou jump on me."  
  
"Hey, I heard that!" Shippou complained, although he did avoid jumping on Inuyasha. "Hey, Inuyasha," he asked, "How did Rin and Kagome smell differently?"  
  
Inuyasha opened one eye to look at the kitsune kit. "You can't smell the difference between a human child that follows my brother around and Kagome?"  
  
Shippou stomped a little kitsune foot. "That's not what I meant, and you know it," he complained. "I mean, what was important about where you guys licked them?"  
  
Kagome blushed at the reference to being licked, but Inuyasha just closed his eyes. "Smell Kagome's neck if you're so curious," he mumbled, getting drowsier by the minute.  
  
Shippou jumped up to Kagome's shoulder and sniffed, forgetting that his nose was stopped up by the pollen. "I smell nothing," he pouted.  
  
Kagome laughed. "What you do not smell," she quoted, "is iocane powder. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and dissolves instantly in liquid."  
  
Inuyasha, who was asleep and snoring softly, said nothing. Miroku and Sango, who had added more fuel to the pitiful fire and were sitting across from her, gave her a strange look. "Um, Kagome-sama," Miroku asked, "What are you talking about?"  
  
Kagome laughed again, softly so she wouldn't disturb Inuyasha. She rubbed on his left ear as she answered. "It is a quote from another American movie called The Princess Bride. I'm not even sure I got the quote totally right. I haven't seen that movie in years."  
  
"Ooh, tell us another story!" Shippou exclaimed from Kagome's shoulder.  
  
Kagome stopped rubbing Inuyasha's ear to rub at her own ear. "Not so loud, Shippou-chan," she muttered  
  
"Just a short one," Shippou pleaded.  
  
Kagome sighed and resumed rubbing Inuyasha's ear again. "The Princess Bride isn't exactly a short story, Shippou, and I'm a little tired myself. It has been a very long day."  
  
Miroku snickered, "She can say that alright!" Then he cried out in pain as Sango slapped him.  
  
"Rin wants the pretty miko-lady to tell about the little red wearing girl," a cheerful voice said from the entrance of the cave. Everyone in the group, except Inuyasha, turned towards the voice, but only Shippou and Kirara, who was now curled up on Sango's lap, could actually see Sesshoumaru and Rin as they approached the fire. Inuyasha might have twitched his ears in their direction if his right one hadn't been pressed into Kagome's lap and his left one being stroked absently by Kagome's fingers.  
  
"And you say you aren't his bitch," Sesshoumaru stated as he sat in front of the fire at Kagome's right side. His tail had been wrapped around his arm, and he now held his arm towards the fire to dry it again, as he was once again soaked. A dripping Rin sat on Sesshoumaru's right, drying her hair in a mimic of Sesshoumaru's drying of his tail.  
  
"I wish you wouldn't call me a bitch," Kagome muttered.  
  
"Why?" Sesshoumaru asked. "Does it mean something else in your time?"  
  
If it hadn't been so dark in the cave, Kagome might have noticed Sango frantically waving her arms to warn Kagome of the trap being set up for her, but she really couldn't see Sango very well, and it seemed more life- preserving to keep her eyes on Sesshoumaru.  
  
"Yeah," she answered, "but I've explained it to Inuyasha before, and he still calls me bitch, so I doubt it will make any difference to you."  
  
"Try me," Sesshoumaru answered, using more casual speech to keep Kagome off her guard.  
  
"Okay," she said. "In my time, calling someone a bitch is an insult. It can mean a woman uses cruelty and dishonesty to get ahead in the world, or it can mean that a woman is bossy, or it could mean that she is sexually immoral, like saying she is no better than a bitch in heat."  
  
"And in your time," Sesshoumaru said, "people say 'God bless you,' when you sneeze?"  
  
"Some people do," Kagome replied, "but that is really more of an American tradition."  
  
"I have not heard of this America. Where is it?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
Pleased by his curiosity and too tired and soothed by Inuyasha's weight in her lap to notice the danger, Kagome happily answered his questions. "If you go east, far beyond the furthest island of Japan and across the ocean, there are two very large masses of land, connected by a little piece in the middle. They are called North and South America. North America has three countries on it. The one at the top is Canada. The one at the bottom is Mexico. Both stretch east and west to both oceans. The one in the middle, also stretching to both costs, is called the United States of America. When I say something is American, I'm referring to the country in he middle. Of course, I'm pretty sure that the land is divided into different countries at this time."  
  
"And when, exactly, is your time?" he asked.  
  
Kagome blinked, suddenly realizing how foolish she had been to speak so freely with Sesshoumaru, especially regarding where she came from. "Oh, did I say time? Ha, ha..."  
  
Sesshoumaru made a disappointed sound deep in his throat. "You have referred to your time several times already. This Sesshoumaru wants to know when you are from."  
  
Kagome swallowed hard and considered waking Inuyasha for protection, but he was softly snoring in a deep, healing sleep, his slight purr vibrating against her legs. She sighed in resignation. "I want your word you won't involve yourself with my time or my people, directly or indirectly," she said, looking the inu-youkai lord straight in the eyes. "Otherwise, you may as well just kill me now."  
  
Sesshoumaru actually blinked. "What meaning would the word of this Sesshoumaru have for you?" he asked.  
  
"You are the Lord of the Western Lands, are you not?" she asked, not needing a response. "And the father you and Inuyasha share is well- regarded by everyone I have heard speak of him. Therefore, he must have been a man, I mean, a youkai of honor, and if you are ruling in his stead, you must be as well."  
  
"Honor," Sesshoumaru muttered, staring into the fire. Then he turned back to Kagome. "You have my word that I will not, neither directly nor indirectly, invade your time or destroy your people. That is what you really are concerned about, are you not?"  
  
Kagome nodded. "From my estimates, I am from 500 years in the future," she answered.  
  
"So far," Sesshoumaru muttered. "And there are no youkai in this future?"  
  
"I used to think that," Kagome answered, "since I had never seen a youkai until a centipede youkai pulled me into this time, but since coming here I have seen an animated mask and one kitsune."  
  
"You saw a kitsune?" Shippou asked. "You never told me!"  
  
"Well, it was sort of dragging a girl into hell, so it didn't seem like a good bedtime story for you," she answered with a sheepish smile.  
  
Rin gasped and pointed at Shippou. "He is a kitsune! Is he going to drag Rin into hell?"  
  
Shippou snorted as best he could with a stuffed-up nose. "I'm only a kit," he grumbled. "Besides, kitsune only take children to hell if they refuse to pass on into the otherworld and have become evil spirits."  
  
"But the pretty miko-lady just said..." Rin insisted.  
  
"Actually, the girl had died and was becoming an evil spirit," Kagome clarified.  
  
"Oh," Rin answered, resting against Sesshoumaru's side and giving a yawn that Kagome, Sango, and Miroku all involuntary mimicked.  
  
"So there are youkai in your time, then," Sesshoumaru said.  
  
"Yeah, I guess so," she answered. "I'm not sure why we hardly ever see them. Everyone believes they have faded away into mythology and legend, but maybe they are all disguising themselves somehow. Mostly, my time is very safe."  
  
Inuyasha, still asleep, twitched his ear and gave a snort. He rolled over onto his belly, wrapped his right arm around Kagome to grasp her left hip, and buried his face deeper into her lap. Kagome blushed fiercely as Sesshoumaru gave her a knowing look. She tried to ignore Sesshoumaru, instead using both hands to smooth his hair down his back and rub both of his ears, which his change in position had presented to her. His hand on her hip gave her a squeeze, and Kagome gave a yelp of surprise.  
  
"Not mates, indeed," Sesshoumaru scoffed.  
  
"What's going on?" Miroku whispered.  
  
"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Sango muttered back.  
  
"Inuyasha buried his face in Kagome's lap and squeezed her hip," the kitsune blurted out.  
  
"Sango, I am very sleepy. May I rest my head on the softness of your lap?" Miroku could be heard asking.  
  
"No," Sango replied. "Nor may you squeeze my hip. Or any part of me."  
  
Kirara gave a hiss of agreement.  
  
Sesshoumaru cursed his non-functioning nose, not having noticed the fire- cat before, even though it was curled up on the exterminator's lap in its vulnerable form. When Sesshoumaru looked into its eyes, it hissed at him, a warning to leave her master alone. Sesshoumaru scoffed at the idea of any youkai calling a human master, deciding any such creature could not be a threat.  
  
"Inuyasha doesn't think Kagome's time is safe," Shippou said out of the blue. Whenever she goes back to take her te-su-tsu, he gets really mad and tells her she can't go back. Once he even tried to destroy the well."  
  
"He tried to destroy the well to keep me in my time, Shippou," Kagome corrected.  
  
"Yeah, but only because he'd been hurt by Sesshoumaru and couldn't protect you," Shippou muttered, daring to give Sesshoumaru a glare because Kagome and Inuyasha were between him and the inu-youkai lord. Sesshoumaru ignored him.  
  
"A well is the portal between this time and Kagome's time?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
Shippou and Kagome both gasped. "Oops," Shippou muttered. "But its not like you can just jump in the well and be in Kagome's time," he quickly added. "I've tried, and it doesn't work. Only Kagome and Inuyasha can go through the well."  
  
"Kaede-sama, an old human miko, thinks that it is the subduing rosary Inuyasha wears, connecting Inuyasha and Kagome, that allows him to follow her through the well and retrieve her from her time," Miroku added. "If you let Kagome put a subduing rosary on you, then maybe you can see her world, too. None of us were willing to risk it."  
  
Kagome had unconsciously let one hand fall from one of Inuyasha's ears to finger the necklace of beads and teeth. "You cursed your mate?" Sesshoumaru questioned, disbelieving.  
  
"No, it wasn't like that!" Kagome exclaimed. "Kaede put the rosary on him because Inuyasha was trying to kill me. She told me to say a subduing word, and I just said the first thing that came to my mind."  
  
"Yeah," Shippou laughed. "She said, 'sit'! Just like for a dog."  
  
Sesshoumaru looked at Kagome with no expression, but she was certain he was disapproving. "Hey, what do you expect? He was flying at me, baring his teeth, like some sort of rabid dog! Like I said, it was just the first thing that came to my mind."  
  
"And if you removed the cursed rosary, he would try to kill you again?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
"No! I mean, I don't think so. It's just that, well, subduing him is the only way I can go home."  
  
"Its true," Sango added. "If she didn't sit him into the ground, she would be stuck here forever, and never get to go home to see her family or take her te-su-tsu."  
  
"This Sesshoumaru is unfamiliar with the word te-su-tsu," the inu-youkai lord said.  
  
"Miroku, could you bring my pack over here?" Kagome asked. "I'd get it myself, but Inuyasha is still asleep."  
  
Miroku agreed, and a bag with shoulder straps, dyed an intense yellow, was placed between Kagome and Sesshoumaru. His first instinct was to sniff at it, but that was useless, so he waited for Kagome to open the bag and explain te-su-tsu to him. She pulled out a piece of folded paper covered with characters, both familiar and of a foreign style, but the paper had a uniformity that seemed unnatural, and it had uniform light-blue lines running vertically down the page, lines that contained the characters. The characters had not been applied with ink and brush, making them look awkward and inelegant, and they had apparently been applied to the paper with more concern for haste then the beauty of the penmanship. Another hand had written comments and corrections in red ink, also not applied with a brush.  
  
"You go back to your time to write on paper without brushed?" he asked.  
  
Kagome laughed a little nervously. "There is more to it then just writing. We have public education that everyone must attend for a certain number of years. Everyone is educated, regardless of income or social background, although those with enough money usually go to private schools because of status, but everyone learns to read, to write, mathematics, history, and such. Then, when you get to be my age, you have to pass a test to see if you will be allowed further education, which will lead to better jobs. I take tests like this one to demonstrate what I have learned, and to practice for the test that will allow me to go into high school."  
  
Sesshoumaru nodded. "How do you write without a brush?" he asked. Kagome pulled out a pen, and drew a few swirls on the back of the test paper. Sesshoumaru took the pen from her and frowned. "What is this called? What is its material?"  
  
Kagome noted that he pen she had grabbed had a clear plastic case and sighed. "Its called a pen. The ink is in the middle of that metal tube, and a little ball of metal at the end controls the flow of the ink. When the pen is rolled over paper, the ink is released as the ball rolls." Sesshoumaru nodded for her to continue. "The outer material, the transparent blue stuff, is called plastic. Almost everything is made of plastic in my time."  
  
Sesshoumaru looked at the pen, and gave it the slightest squeeze. The plastic casing cracked. "Sorry," he said, "but the humans of the future are not very intelligent, despite their education system, if they make everything out of this."  
  
"It isn't all like that!" she said with a sigh, looking in sorrow at her broken pen. It would still work, but still! "Plastic comes in lots of different strengths and textures and colors." She pulled out the plastic water bottle Inuyasha had used when he took the aspirin. "This bottle is plastic. It is transparent, so you can see the quality and quantity of what you are drinking, and it is less likely to shatter than glass." As she said this, she tossed the bottle against the wall of the cave. It dented a little, but did not break. "And this," she said, pulling out a reseal-able sandwich bag, "could easily be stretched out or torn, but it is waterproof, and works great for carrying dry food." She opened the bag and handed Sesshoumaru a dry-roasted peanut.  
  
"Human food doesn't suit me," he muttered, handing the morsel to Rin, who gobbled it up and asked for more. Kagome handed the girl the whole bag, warning her not to make herself sick by eating too many.  
  
"Rin wants to hear the story about the girl in the red cloak with the hood," the child interrupted with another yawn, her mouth full of peanuts, but Kagome couldn't see the infraction of manners.  
  
"Okay," Kagome replied with a yawn of her own, pushing the bag behind her and petting Inuyasha's ears again. The hanyou rubbed his face deeper into her lap and purred.  
  
"Why are you not mated with my worthless hanyou half-brother?" Sesshoumaru suddenly asked.  
  
"Well, it isn't because he is worthless, or a hanyou, or even because he's your brother," Kagome snapped in reply. Then her voice grew quieter. "I'm too young to be married," Kagome said. "In my time, I'm still considered a child."  
  
"You're a pup?" Shippou asked, amazed that his mother-figure was considered to be a child herself.  
  
"Well, in this time I'm not considered a child," she amended, "and there are girls in my time that have babies at my age, but it is not socially accepted. I'm only 15."  
  
"So you are biologically an adult and socially a child?" Sesshoumaru asked for clarification.  
  
"Well, technically I'm a teenager, the time between child and adult, but I still wouldn't be allowed to marry. Besides," she added, rubbing Inuyasha's ears, "I'm not sure exactly how Inuyasha feels about me."  
  
Sesshoumaru snorted. "No, I'm serious," Kagome said. "He's never told me, and its not like we've ever kissed or anything." Kagome blushed as she said this. Then she frowned. "And there is always Kikyou."  
  
"Another woman?" Sesshoumaru asked.  
  
Miroku made a sound of disgust. "I would not consider Kikyou-sama to be a woman."  
  
Sesshoumaru frowned. "Not a woman?"  
  
Kagome gave a weak laugh. "Well, technically she was a woman. Now she's sort of dead. A mononoke tried to resurrect her into a clay body baked with her bones and grave soil, and it probably would have worked, but she had already been reincarnated." Kagome looked into the fire. "I took most of my soul back from her, so now she steals the souls of recently deceased women to stay animated." Kagome gave a little sniffle. "Inuyasha loved her, I think, before she died, and Kikyou thinks that he should die for her, since she died when she thought he had died."  
  
Sesshoumaru growled low in his throat. "Kikyou is the miko that pinned him to the sacred tree with a cursed arrow," he realized. Kagome nodded. "And you are her reincarnation, and you freed him from the tree." Kagome nodded again. Sesshoumaru stood up then and started towards the cave entrance, wrapping his tail over his shoulder as he walked.  
  
"Where are we going, Sesshoumaru-sama?" Rin asked.  
  
"Rin, you stay here. I will be back for you," Sesshoumaru answered without turning around.  
  
"But where are you going?" Kagome asked. "And why all of a sudden?"  
  
"I am going to get revenge for the death of my father's youngest son," he said before disappearing into the stormy night.  
  
*****  
  
Aisuru: This is the chapter that doesn't end. It just goes on and on, my friend. Some people started reading it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue reading it forever just because this is the chapter that doesn't end. It just goes on and on, my friend. Some people started reading it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue reading it forever just because this is the chapter that doesn't end. It just goes on and on, my friend. Some people started reading it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue reading it forever just because this is the chapter that doesn't end. It just goes on and on, my friend...  
  
Sango: Aisuru? SHUT UP!!!  
  
Aisuru: ...  
  
Shippou: Where's the story-telling?  
  
Aisuru: ...  
  
*****  
  
Kagome felt sort of sick, not just because she was over tired, or had been repeatedly drenched in the rain, or because Inuyasha had lost control of his youkai blood and attacked her in the strangest way, or even because Sesshoumaru had threatened to snap her neck or bite her. No, Kagome felt sick because she worried what Inuyasha would say when he woke up and realized that Sesshoumaru had gone off with the intent of killing what was left of Kikyou! Sure, Kagome wasn't fond of her reanimated pre- incarnation, but Inuyasha probably loved her. She considered waking Inuyasha and warning him, but then he would probably try to run after his brother, and Inuyasha wasn't in any state to leave the safety of the cave or challenge Sesshoumaru.  
  
She sighed and rubbed his ears instead. For all she knew, it might be the last time he allowed such contact.  
  
"Pretty miko-lady," Rin said to get her attention.  
  
"My name is Kagome," she corrected.  
  
"Kagome-sama," Rin started again, "will you tell Rin the story now?" The girl gave a little sniffle and curled up on the warmer rock Sesshoumaru had just vacated, resting her head on Kagome's side.  
  
"Sure," Kagome said, "why not? Once upon a time there was a little girl named Little Red Riding Hood. Everyone called her that because she wore a bright red cape with hood. Her grandmother lived in a little house in the woods, and she received word that her grandmother was sick, so she packed a basket with treats and went off, over the hills and through the woods, to her grandmother's house. When she was in the woods, near the end of her journey, she came across a wolf. She knew that she shouldn't speak to the wolf, as little girls mustn't ever talk to strangers, but the wolf seemed polite, and when he asked her what was in her basket, she told him that she was headed to her grandmother's house with a basket of treats. The wolf said that he knew a short-cut, and pointed for Little Red Riding Hood to go in a different direction. She thanked the wolf and took the path, which was actually longer. The wolf hurried down the direct path, entered the house, and ate the grandmother."  
  
"Oh, how horrible!" Rin cried.  
  
"Its just a story," Kagome sighed. Then she whispered to Rin, "besides, the good guys all live in the end. So when Little Red Riding Hood got to her grandmother's house, it was the wolf in her grandmother's bed, dressed in her grandmother's nightgown. 'Grandmother,' Little Red Riding Hood said, 'What big eyes you have!' 'The better to see you with, my dear,' the wolf replied. 'Grandmother,' Little Red Riding Hood said, 'What a big nose you have!' 'The better to smell you with, my dear,' the wolf replied, smiling. 'Grandmother,' Little Red Riding Hood said, leaning closer to the bed, 'What big teeth you have!' 'The better to eat you with!' the wolf exclaimed, jumping out of bed and gobbling her up as well. It just so happened that a wood-cutter was walking by, and when he heard Little Red Riding Hood's cries for help, he rushed in with his axe, cut the wolf in half, and pulled Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother out of the wolf's stomach. Little Red Riding Hood never talked to strangers again. The End."  
  
"Is it just me," Miroku muttered, "or was that story full of sexual undertones?"  
  
"You lecher," Sango complained.  
  
"Actually, he's right," Kagome said with a yawn. "That story was told to warn girls to beware of sexual predators, represented by the mysterious wolf, when they go out into the world. Notice that she was carrying around a basket of 'treats' that caught the wolf's attention. And I think the red of her hooded cloak represents the shed blood of lost innocence."  
  
Miroku actually blushed.  
  
*****  
  
Aisuru: The 17 page, 10 font, boy-my-eyes-are-tired chapter is over! Yay! Someone throw me a party! Or, on second thought, maybe I'll just go to bed.  
  
Inuyasha: Zzzzz  
  
Kagome: Zzzzz  
  
Miroku: Zzzzz  
  
Shippou: Zzzzz  
  
Kirara: Zzzzz  
  
Rin: Zzzzz  
  
Sango: Zzzzz. Zzzzz. Aisuru, shut up. Zzzzz.  
  
Aisuru: ... 


End file.
